UNIVERSITY  OF  CA  RIVERSIDE,  LIBRARY 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNM 
RIVERSIDE 


COLERIDGE,  SHELLEY,  GOETHE. 


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LEE  AND  SHEPARD,  Publishers,  Boston. 


COLERIDGE,  SHELLEY, 
GOETHE. 


BIOGRAPHIC  ESTHETIC  STUDIES. 


BY 

GEORGE  H.  CALVERT. 


BOSTON: 

LEE  AND   SHEPARD,  PUBLISHERS. 

NEW  YORK: 

CHARLES  T.  DILLINGHAM. 


c 


Copyright,  i8So, 
By  GEORGE  H.  CALVERT. 


RIVERSIDE,  CAMBRIDGE: 

STEREOTYPED    AND     PRINTED    BY 

H.  O.   HOUGHTON   AND  COMPANY. 


CONTENTS. 


Coleridge 'i 

Shelley ^29 

Goethe 259 


COLERIDGE. 


TO   COLERIDGE. 

Coleridge,  for  many  a  studious  year  I  have  been 

Thy  thankful  mate ;  climbing  the  misty  heights 

Of  speculation,  or  when  —  the  delights 

Of  great  imagination's  realm  serene 

Blessing  me  through  th'  impassioned  visions  seen 

By  ravished  genius  —  thou  hast  shown  me  sights, 

Revealed  to  mighty  Poets  with  the  lights 

Struck  by  creative  frenzy;  visions  clean, 

That  mind  in  purgatorial  surges  dip, 

And  we  come  freshened  forth,  so  purified, 

That  ever  anew  thy  rich  companionship 

I  court,  to  warm  me  at  a  holy  fire, 

And  be  with  deep  soul-logic  stoutly  plied, 

Or  trance-ensteeped  by  thy  melodious  lyre. 


COLERIDGE. 


Whoever  would  write  becomingly  about 
Coleridge  must  admire  him,  and  admire  him 
with  earnest  thankfulness.  Sympathy,  —  so 
essential  to  the  biographer,  aye,  and  to  the 
full  critic,  —  even  a  several-sided  sympathy, 
were  not  enough.  The  warmth  of  admiration 
will  enkindle  to  its  tenderest  our  charity,  and 
admiration  and  charity,  with  their  united  glow, 
will  dissolve  into  vapor  any  thoughts  on  the 
weaknesses  and  failures  of  this  remarkable 
man  ;  so  that,  if  we  think  of  them  at  all,  we 
think  of  them  only  with  a  plaintive  murmur, 
because  through  them  we  have  been  bereft 
of  some  of  the  harvest  we  had  a  right  to 
expect  from  the  healthful  growth  of  such  di- 
verse and  peerless  powers.  And  even  mild- 
est murmur  will  be  hushed,  through  sympathy 
with  the  sufferings  his  weaknesses  caused  to 


12  COLERIDGE. 

the  author  and  man,  our  splendent  gracious 
benefactor. 

Were  there  left  of  Coleridge  nothing  but 
Kiibla  Khan,  from  this  gem  one  might  almost 
reconstruct,  in  full  brightness,  its  great  au- 
thor's poetic  work,  just  as  the  expert  zoologist 
reconstructs  the  extinct  megatherium  from  a 
single  fossil  bone.  Of  this  masterpiece,  the 
chief  beauty  is  not  the  noted  music  of  the  ver- 
sification, but  the  range  and  quality  of  the  im- 
aginings embodied  in  this  music.  Were  there 
in  these  no  unearthly  breathings,  no  mysteri- 
ous grandeur,  the  verse  could  not  have  been 
made  to  pulsate  so  rhythmically.  The  essence 
of  the  melody  is  in  the  fineness  of  the  concep- 
tion, in  the  poetic  imaginations.  In  this  case, 
as  in  all  cases,  the  spirit  not  only  controls  but 
creates  the  body.  Metrical  talent  m'ust  be 
there  to  handle  the  molten  words  as  they  flow 
from  the  furnace  of  genius,  shaping  and  placing 
them  while  still  swollen  with  genial  warmth. 
Genius,  the  master,  cannot  do  without  talent, 
the  servant. 

"  Five  miles  meandering  with  a  mazy  motion 
Through  wood  and  dale  the  sacred  river  ran, 
Then  reached  the  caverns  measureless  to  man. 
And  sank  in  tumult  to  a  lifeless  ocean  :  " 


COLERIDGE.  1 3 

To  present  of  a  sudden  to  the  mind  a  signal 
thought,  which  springs  unexpectedly  but  ap- 
propriately out  of  another,  the  meeting  of  the 
two  striking  a  light  that  flashes  a  new  and 
brilliant  ray  upon  the  attention,  —  to  do  this 
is  to  perform  a  high  poetic  feat.  The  sacred 
river  running  through  wood  and  dale,  then 
gliding  into  the  earth  through  caverns  meas- 
ureless to  man,  to  sink  "  in  tumult  to  a  lifeless 
ocean  :  "  this  mysterious  picture  sets  the  mind 
a  brooding,  awakens  its  poetic  sensibility. 
Suppose  the  passage  had  stopped  here.  Re- 
galed by  such  a  fresh,  impressive  presentation, 
the  mind  would  have  grasped  it  as  an  inward 
boon,  to  be  held  tightly  hold  of  by  the  suscep- 
tible reader,  awakening  in  him,  through  quick 
affinities,  thoughts  of  human  fate  and  woe. 
But  the  passage  does  not  stop  here  ;  in  the 
poet's  mind,  as  in  the  capable  reader's,  are 
generated  associations  with  human  destiny : 
and  so,  instead  of  a  full  stop  at  "  ocean,"  there 
is  only  a  colon,  the  poet's  thought  springing 
forward  into  the  two  wonderful  lines,  — 

"And  mid  this  tumult  Kubla  heard  from  far 
Ancestral  voices  prophesying  war." 

And  the  passage,  instead  of  leaving  on  the 
reader  an  impression  of  calm,  strange  beauty. 


14  COLERIDGE. 

kindles  into  a  startling  splendor.  The  phys- 
ical tumult  passes  into  human  tumult ;  the 
vague,  hoarse  swell  of  a  torrent  grows  articu- 
late, the  "  caverns  measureless  to  man  "  deepen 
into  the  abode  of  former  kings,  who,  from  the 
subterranean  darkness  to  which  their  warrior- 
ambition  has  doomed  them,  throw  upon  the 
ear  of  their  Sardanapalean  descendant  doleful, 
menacing  predictions.  All  this,  and  more,  is 
in  those  two  lines,  so  laden  with  meaning  and 
music,  whereby  the  physical  picture  is  magni- 
fied, deepened,  vivified,  through  psychical  par- 
ticipation. The  poetical  is  ever  an  appeal  to 
the  deepest  in  the  human  mind,  and  a  great 
burst  of  poetic  light  like  this  lays  bare,  for  the 
imagination  to  roam  in,  a  vast  indefinite  do- 
main. 

In  another  part  of  the  short  poem  is  a  sim- 
ilar sudden  heightening  of  effect  by  the  intro- 
duction of  humanity  into  a  scene  of  purely 
terrene  features  : 

"  But  oh!  that  deep  romantic  chasm  which  slanted 
Down  the  green  hill  athwart  a  cedarn  cover  1 
A  savage  place  !  as  holy  and  enchanted 
As  e'er  beneath  a  waning  moon  was  haunted  " 

These  lines  could  have  been  written  only  by  a 
poet  with  the  finest  ear,  an  internal  ear.   When 


COLERIDGE.  1 5 

we  come  to  the  last  word  of  the  fourth  line, 
we  pass  into  a  higher  region  :  "  haunted ! " 
Haunted  by  what  ? 

"  By  woman  wailing  for  her  demon  lover." 

On  this  single  line  is  stamped  the  power  of  a 
great  poet ;  that  is,  a  poet  in  whom  breadth 
and  depth  of  intellectual  and  sympathetic  en- 
dowment give  to  the  refining  aspiring  poetic 
faculty  material  to  work  upon  drawn  from  the 
grander,  subtler,  remoter  resources  of  the  hu- 
man soul,  —  material  beyond  the  reach  of  any 
but  poets  of  the  first  order,  whose  right,  in- 
deed, to  a  place  in  this  order  rests  upon  their 
power  of  higher  spiritual  reach  united  to  wider 
intellectual  range.  How  much  is  involved 
»in  this  short  passage  !  A  landscape  gift,  to 
present  in  two  lines  a  clear  picture  of  the 
"  savage  place  ;  "  then,  by  a  leap  of  the  poet's 
imagination,  the  scene  is  overhung  by  an 
earthly  atmosphere  that  makes  it  so  holy  and 
enchanted  that  (and  here  the  poet  takes  the 
final  great  leap)  it  is  fit,  "  under  a  waning 
moon,"  to  be  haunted 

"  By  woman  wailing  for  her  demon  lover." 

That  is  a  poetically  imaginative  leap  of  the 
boldest  and  most  beautiful.     What  an  ethereal 


1 6  COLERIDGE. 

springiness,  what  an  intellectual  swing,  in  the 
mind  that  could  make  such  a  leap !  That  par- 
ticular one  Coleridge's  friend  Wordsworth 
could  not  have  made,  strong  as  he  was  in 
poetic  imagination.  It  implies  almost  some- 
thing spectral,  superearthly,  something  uncan- 
ny. And  what  an  exquisitely  musical  rhythm 
the  thought  weaves  about  itself  for  its  poetic 
incarnation. 

Kubla  Khan  is  a  fragment,  j  ust  as  is  a  much 
longer,  and  his  greatest,  poem,  Christabel.  In 
the  autumn  of  1797  Coleridge,  then  in  poor 
health,  had  retired  to  a  lonely  farmhouse  on 
the  confines  of  Somerset  and  Devonshire. 
One  day,  from  the  effect  of  an  anodyne,  pre- 
scribed to  him,  he  fell  asleep  in  his  chair  while 
reading  in  Purchases  Pilgrimage  a  passage  like* 
this :  "  Here  the  Khan  Kubla  commanded  a 
palace  to  be  built,  and  a  stately  garden  there- 
unto ;  and  thus  ten  miles  of  fertile  ground 
were  enclosed  with  a  wall."  He  slept  about 
three  hours.  When  he  awoke  he  seemed  to 
have  composed  two  or  three  hundred  lines  de- 
scribing what,  in  this  sleep  of  the  outward 
senses,  he  had  inwardly  seen  and  heard.  So 
vivid  was  his  recollection  that  immediately  on 
awaking  he  seized  a  pen  and  began  to  write  as 


COLERIDGE.  I J 

one  would  when  dictated  to.  In  the  midst  of 
his  writing  he  was  called  out  on  business. 
And  he  went  out !  Suppose  a  great  states- 
man and  orator,  in  the  full  swing  of  a  grave 
momentous  speech  before  a  public  assembly, 
to  be  suddenly  interrupted  and  asked  to  listen 
to  a  young  lady's  dream  !  Not  more  imperti- 
nent were  this  than  the  interruption  of  Cole- 
ridge by  a  call  of  outward  business.  Nay,  it 
were  so  much  the  less  impertinent  as  the  po- 
etic dreams  of  Coleridge  were  more  freighted 
with  wisdom  and  enduring  thought  than  any 
statesman's  oration.  To  permit  himself  to  be 
arrested  in  an  immortal  flight,  as  was  this  of 
Kubla  Khan  !  to  lay  down  his  pen  and  go  out 
to  talk  to  some  intruder,  from  a  small  neigh- 
boring town,  about  a  prosaic,  insignificant, 
transitory,  delusive  matter  of  fact !  And  he 
who  was  a  bungler  at  these  every-day  opacities, 
and  was  an  expert  at  translucent  ideals.  The 
business  of  Coleridge  was  to  dream  poetic 
dreams,  not  to  act.  So  grand  and  new  and 
beautiful  and  significant  were  his  dreams  that, 
like  works  of  Art,  they  become  stimulative 
and  generative  of  high  thoughts  in  others.  In 
Coleridge  there  was  so  deep  an  inwardness 
that,  when  abstracted  from  the  outer  world, 


1 8  COLERIDGE. 

whether  in  a  trance-like  sleep,  as  when  he  pro- 
duced Kiibla  Khmi,  or  in  exalted  soliloquy, 
there  poured  forth,  from  large  sources  of  sen- 
sibility and  reason,  streams  of  richly-worded 
invention,  floods  of  imaginative  thought. 

When,  after  a  detention  of  an  hour,  he  came 
back  and  resumed  his  pen,  the  vision  had 
faded.  And  so,  Kubla  KJian,  like  other  of 
Coleridge's  work,  is  a  brilliant  fragment. 

Kubla  Khan  is  likewise  typical  of  Cole- 
ridge's poetry  in  that  it  is  more  spiritual  than 
passionate.  Coleridge,  while,  as  poet,  appeal- 
ing to  and  touching  the  feelings,  was  not  a 
man  of  fervent  predominant  desires.  His 
sensibilities  —  as  sound  as  they  were  delicate 
—  were  not  fortified  by  depth  and  warmth 
of  passion  :  he  was  more  tender  than  impas- 
sioned. 

In  its  shining  superexcellence  the  poetical 
looks  extravagant  and  visionary,  in  its  prepo- 
tency it  seems  preposterous.  And  this  for  the 
same  reason  why,  with  our  earthly  eyes,  we 
cannot  see  any  of  the  millions  of  spiritual 
creatures  that  "  walk  the  earth  both  when  we 
wake  and  when  we  sleep  ;  "  our  vision  is  not 
enough  spiritualized.  The  best  function  of  the 
poetical  is  to  ascend  to  the  interior  spiritual 


COLERIDGE.  I9 

Source  ;  and  to  follow  it  thither  is  not  easy. 
The  poetical  is  a  divine  flame,  in  whose  trans- 
figuring light  the  concrete  grossness  of  earthly- 
realities  being  fused,  the  causative  law  of  their 
being  becomes  discernible.  When  in  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount  we  are  enjoined  to  "love 
your  enemies,  bless  those  that  curse  you,  do 
good  to  them  that  hate  you,  and  pray  for  them 
which  despitefully  use  you  and  persecute  you, 
that  you  may  be  the  children  of  your  Father 
which  is  in  heaven,"  we  listen  in  despair,  all 
this  so  transcends  our  conceptions.  These  in- 
junctions are  a  poetic  ideal  reached  by  the  ut- 
terer  of  them  through  the  sublime  spirituality 
of  his  nature.  Dwelling  habitually  on  this  up- 
per plane,  he  was  enabled  to  seize  the  higher 
possibilities  of  humanity.  Like  the  Beatitudes 
and  the  rest  of  this  transcendent  Sermon, 
these  injunctions  are  the  poetry  of  the  moral 
sense.  To  the  sensuous,  and  still  more  to  the 
sensual,  ear  they  sound  impracticable,  Utopian. 
They  are  a  voice  from  the  supreme  altitudes, 
proclaiming  to  what  elevations  we  are  capable 
of  mounting. 

In  the  Ancient  Mariner,  the  hero  of  that 
great  poem,  after  shooting  the  Albatross,  ex 
claims, 


20  COLERIDGE. 

"  And  I  had  done  a  hellish  thing, 
And  it  would  work  'em  woe  : 
For  all  averred,  I  had  killed  the  bird 
That  made  the  breeze  to  blow. 
Ah,  wretch  !  said  they,  the  bird  to  slay. 
That  made  the  breeze  to  blow  !  " 

In  thus  reproaching  him  who  had  slain  the 
Albatross,  the  crew  obeyed  a  movement  — 
by  no  means  confined  to  superstitious  sailors 
—  of  human  shortsightedness,  whereby  men 
would  fain  force  the  moral  law  to  square  with 
their  temporary  desires.  When  the  crew  per- 
ceived that  the  breeze  did  not  cease,  and  that 
the  fog  had  disappeared, 

"  Then  all  averred,  I  had  killed  the  bird 
That  brought  the  fog  and  mist. 
'T  was  right,  said  they,  such  birds  to  slay. 
That  bring  the  fog  and  mist. 
The  fair  breeze  blew,  the  white  foam  flew, 
The  furrow  followed  free  ; 
We  were  the  first  that  ever  burst 
Into  that  silent  sea." 

Thus  they  sped  until  they  reached  the  Line. 
Then  the  breeze  suddenly  ceased  to  blow.  In 
a  copper  sky  the  Sun  at  noon  stood  right 
above  the  perpendicular  mast.  In  the  air  was 
no  breath  ;  the  vessel,  without  motion,  as  if 
pinned  to  the  spot,  was 


COLERIDGE.  21 

"  As  idle  as  a  painted  ship 
Upon  a  painted  ocean." 

And  now  the  water  gave  out : 

"  Water,  water,  everywhere, 
Nor  any  drop  to  drink." 

Their  lips  were  baked,  their  tongues  withered 
at  the  root.  Upon  the  Anoient  Mariner  evil 
looks  were  turned  : 

"  Ah  !  well-a-day  !  what  evil  looks 
Had  I  from  old  and  young ! 
Instead  of  the  cross,  the  Albatross 
About  my  neck  was  hung." 

A  sail !  a  sail !  Hope  flattered  their  sink- 
ing souls.  But  strange !  as  the  ship  descried 
passes  between  them  and  the  setting  sun  the 
face  of  the  sun  is  crossed  as  with  bars.  The 
sail  was  but  the  skeleton-phantom  of  a  ship. 
She  came  along  side !  On  the  deck  are  two 
figures,  Death  and  a  woman  (a  harlot,  symbol 
of  death  in  life),  playing  at  dice : 

"  The  game  is  done  !     I  've  won  !  I  've  won ! 
Quoth  she,  and  whistles  thrice." 

She  had  won  the  Ancient  Mariner,  but  the 
crew  is  doomed. 

To  give  life  to  these  fantastical  imaginations 
is  needed  a  poet's  and  a  thinker's  thought,  and 


22  COLERIDGE. 

to  give  to  the  poet's  thought  depth  and  signifi- 
cance is  needed  spirituality,  with  a  strong  sense 
of  moral  sovereignty.  What  is  more  flat  and 
unprofitable  than  to  hear  a  prosaic  man  tell  his 
dreams  ?  That  tales  to  which  vivacity  is  im- 
parted by  poetic  imaginativeness  are  neverthe- 
less shallow  and  unattractive  when  wanting  a 
moral  background,  is  learnt  when  one  attempts 
to  reread  the  prose  tales  of  Poe.  Behind  their 
fantasy  are  no  depths  ;  their  ingenuity  is  bar- 
ren ;  there  is  no  issue  out  of  their  horrors. 
They  lack  what,  notwithstanding  their  spec- 
tral quality,  Hawthorne's  tales  have,  humanity. 
The  Ancient  Mariner  is  steeped  in  human- 
ity. And  then,  to  these  visionary  inventions  a 
charm  is  imparted  by  their  inward  truth.  For, 
besides  that  the  visions  have  their  birth  in  feel- 
ing, in  a  gifted  being  like  Coleridge  his  super- 
natural would  be  true  to  nature,  because  hav- 
ing in  himself,  like  every  other  human  creature, 
both  the  supernatural  and  the  natural,  —  being 
bound  alike  to  heaven  and  to  earth,  —  his  per- 
ceptions and  his  imaginations  are  illuminated 
by  the  revealing  light  both  of  reason  and  of 
genius. 

This  light  it  is  which,  casting  such  exquisite 
shadows,  makes  the  Ancient  Mariner  to  sparkle 


COLERIDGE.  23 

with  irresistible  fascination.  The  fearful  pen- 
alty which  follows  an  act  so  thoughtless,  seem- 
ingly indifferent,  comparatively  innocent,  as 
that  of  shooting  an  albatross,  might  be  called 
the  poetry  of  retribution.  It  is  an  ascension 
to  the  superior  spiritual  source,  an  ascension 
which  the  poet,  through  the  elevation  of  his 
nature,  is  empowered  to  achieve,  and  which 
his  aesthetic  gifts  enabled  him  to  present  in  a 
captivating  garb.  The  story  of  the  Ancient' 
Mariner  and  the  crew  implicated  in  his  act  is 
a  vdice  from  the  supreme  heights,  which,  ut- 
tered through  a  gifted  poet,  comes  accompa- 
nied by  weird,  musical,  significant  extrava- 
gances. 

Among  the  high  qualities  of  the  Aftcient 
Mariner  the  highest  is  the  symbolical  meaning 
discernible  on  the  brightest  pages,  peering 
through  a  supersensual  radiance,  giving  in- 
tenseness  to  sparkles  of  poetry.  Everywhere 
the  intellectual  vivacity  is  unflagging,  and  the 
whole  is  quickened  by  a  profound  moral  which, 
though  not  obtruded,  is  uttered  by  the  old 
sailor,  who  ends  his  strange  tale  with  th'.se 
deep,  tuneful  words  : 

"  Farewell  !  farewell !  but  this  I  tell 
To  thee,  thou  Wedding  guest ! 


24  COLERIDGE. 

He  prayeth  well,  who  loveth  well 
Both  man  and  bird  and  beast. 

"  He  prayeth  best,  who  loveth  best 
All  things  both  great  and  small ; 
For  the  dear  God  who  loveth  us, 
He  made  and  loveth  all." 

The  same  sound,  beautiful  moral  shines 
through  as  through  Wordsworth's  Hart-leap 
Well: 

"  One  lesson,  Shepherd,  let  us  two  divide, 
Taught  by  what  Nature  shows,  and  what  conceals  ; 
Never  to  blend  our  pleasure  or  our  pride 
With  sorrow  of  the  meanest  thing  that  feels." 

Coleridge  was  one  of  the  most  original  of 
men  ;  that  is,  in  his  mind  there  was  a  light  so 
individual  and  strong  that  on  human  condi- 
tions and  relations  it  cast  fresh  illumination  ; 
and  thence,  since  he  wrote  and  talked,  the 
problems  of  life  are  less  enigmatical,  its  spirit- 
ual capabilities  more  apparent,  its  hopes  more 
assured  and  more  elevated.  Like  some  other 
men  of  his  high  order  Coleridge  was  too  origi- 
nal to  be  at  once  appreciated.  To  men  of  rou- 
tine there  is  offensiveness  in  originality.  Some 
people  have  an  honest  difficulty  in  appreciating 
and  appropriating  fresh  thought.  Some,  when 
they  have  the  culture  and  insight  to  discern 


COLERIDGE.  2$ 

new  power,  have  not  the  frankness  to  speak 
out;  and  the  taking  of  a  pen  in  one's  hand, 
far  from  always  bracing  one's  moral  respon- 
sibility, often  relaxes  it,  through  the  tempta- 
tion offered  by  the  pen  to  blacken  a  rival,  or 
to  lame  a  fresh  competitor  who  looks  formi- 
dable. 

From  honest  ignorance  and  dishonest  de- 
traction Coleridge,  like  his  friend  Wordsworth, 
had,  from  the  very  originality  of  his  genius 
and  the  superiority  of  his  gifts,  to  suffer  more 
than  most  new  candidates  for  literary  honors. 
In  the  short  preface  to  Christabcl  he  thus,  in 
his  gentle  way,  refers  to  one  of  the  charges 
brought  against  him  by  some  of  that  class  of 
writers  called  critics,  but  who  often  deserve 
not  the  high  name  ;  for,  etymologically,  critic 
implies  competency  to  judge.  Coleridge  says:. 
"There  is  amongst  us  a  set  of  critics  who 
seem  to  hold  that  every  possible  thought  or 
image  is  traditional ;  who  have  no  notion  that 
there  are  such  things  as  fountains  in  the  world, 
small  as  well  as  great ;  and  would  therefore 
charitably  derive  every  rill  they  see  flowing 
from  a  perforation  made  in  some  other  man's 
tank." 

Against  the  Ancient  Mariner  and  Christabel 


26  COLERIDGE. 

hostile  criticism  was  as  powerless  as  a  snow- 
storm would  be  to  quench  Hecla  in  full  erup- 
tion, or  earth-fogs  permanently  to  obscure  the 
stars. 

As  in  the  Ancient  Mariner,  so  in  CJiristabcl, 
excellence  is  aimed  at  by  "  interesting  the  af- 
fections through  the  dramatic  truth  of  such 
emotions  as  would  naturally  accompany  such 
situations,  supposing  themreal."  In  both  the 
chief  originality  consists,  not  in  the  supernatu- 
ral frame  in  which  the  tales  are  set, — an  in- 
vention supplied  by  mere  fancy,  —  but  in  the 
quality  of  the  poetic  imagination  displayed  in 
the  management  of  the  story  and  in  particular 
conjunctions.  Were  the  whole  six  hundred 
lines  of  Christabel  (for  unhappily  there  are  no 
more)  in  their  general  quality  unelastic,  un- 
imaginative, instead  of  being,  as  they  are,  buoy- 
ant and  sparkling,  every  page  vivid  with  intel- 
lectual activity,  musical  with  poetic  feeling, 
still  one  would  be  repaid  for  the  reading  of 
every  paragraph,  in  order  not  to  miss  just  these 
two  lines  which  conclude  the  exquisite  descrip- 
tion of  the  Lady  Christabel  praying  by  moon- 
light under  the  old  oak  tree : 

"  And  both  blue  eyes  more  bright  than  clear. 
Each  about  to  have  a  tear." 


COLERIDGE.  2/ 

Coleridge  had  his  share  of  earthly  aflliction, 
—  more  than  his  share,  we  might  say,  had  not 
much  of  his  distress  been  of  his  own  making. 
But  whatever  his  burthens,  they  were  counter- 
weighed by  the  joy  of  harboring  within  him- 
self, and  projecting  upon  others,  such  thoughts. 
How  blessed  the  brain  in  whose  inlets  nestled 
a  perfumed  gem  like  this  : 

"  Quoth  Christabel,  —  so  let  it  be  : 
And  as  the  lady  bade  did  she. 
Her  gentle  limbs  did  she  undress, 
And  lay  down  in  her  loveliness." 

All  three  of  these  poems,  Christabely  the 
Ancient  Mariner,  and  Knbla  Khan,  were  writ- 
ten when  Coleridge  was  in  his  twenty-fifth  or 
twenty-sixth  year.  In  each  of  them  are  beau- 
ties which  so  move  our  admiration  they  give  us 
thrills  which  deeply  touch  and  teach  the  soul. 
What  was  the  individuality  whence  issued  such 
superlative  products  .''  As  easily  can  light- 
ning be  tracked  to  its  lair  as  genius  :  both  have 
their  birth  in  a  fiery  creative  centre,  too  vivid 
with  heat  and  light  to  be  penetrated  or  ap- 
proached. But  the  conditions  under  which 
they  flash  into  exhibition  can  be  studied,  and 
of  the  medium  through  which  the  revelation 
is  made  something  may  be  learnt. 


II. 

The  father  of  Coleridge  was  simple-minded, 
learned,  eccentric.  At  the  age  of  sixteen  he 
quitted  the  house  of  his  impoverished  parents, 
receiving  a  blessing  and  the  half  of  his  father's 
last  crown.  He  had  walked  but  a  few  miles 
when,  overcome  by  thoughts  of  his  destitution, 
he  sat  down  by  the  roadside  and  wept  aloud. 
A  gentleman  happening  to  pass  by  recognized 
the  son  of  his  neighbor,  took  him  home,  and 
sent  him  to  school.  Here  he  was  a  hard  stu- 
dent, married  at  nineteen,  shortly  after  his 
marriage  entered  Sidney  College,  Cambridge, 
distinguished  himself  there  in  Hebrew  and 
mathematics,  and,  had  he  not  been  married, 
would  have  been  rewarded  with  a  fellowship. 
On  leaving  college  he  became  a  teacher  in 
Southampton,  was  afterwards  appointed  head- 
master of  the  school  at  Ottery  St.  Mary,  Dev- 
onshire, and  obtained  the  living  of  the  parish. 
His  son,  the  poet,  thus  speaks  of  him  :  "  My 
father  was  a  good  mathematician,  and  well 
versed  in  the  Greek,  Latin,  and   Hebrew  Ian- 


COLERIDGE.  29 

guages.  He  published,  or  rather  attempted  to 
publish,  several  works.  He  made  the  world 
his  confidant  with  respect  to  his  learning  and 
ingenuity,  and  the  world  seems  to  have  kept 
the  secret  very  faithfully.  His  various  works, 
unthumbed,  uncut,  were  preserved  free  from 
all  pollution  in  the  family  archives.  This  piece 
of  good  luck  promises  to  be  hereditary  ;  for  all 
my  compositions  have  the  same  amiable  home- 
staying  propensity.  The  truth  is,  my  father 
was  not  a  first-rate  genius  ;  he  was,  however, 
a  first-rate  Christian,  which  is  much  better.  In 
learning,  goodheartedness,  absentness  of  mind, 
and  excessive  ignorance  of  the  world,  he  was 
a  perfect  Parson  Adams." 

The  poet's  mother,  Anna  Bowdon,  was  the 
second  wife  of  the  vicar.  Of  their  ten  chil- 
dren, nine  sons  and  one  daughter,  Samuel  Tay- 
lor, born  October  21,  1772,  was  the  youngest. 
The  mother  was  an  admirable  economist  and 
manager.  She  main  aged  so  well  that  she  got 
her  sons  started  in  professional  careers,  in  the. 
army,  the  church,  the  navy.  The  unambitious 
vicar  was  willing  that  they  should  be  brought 
up  to  trades,  except  the  youngest,  Samuel 
Taylor,  the  child  of  his  latter  years,  who,  he 
resolved,  should  be  a  parson.     Several  of  the 


30  COLERIDGE. 

poet's  brothers  died  young,  and  his  only  sister, 
Anne,  at  twenty-one.  Her  he  has  immortal- 
ized in  two  lines : 

'*  Rest,  gentle  Shade,  and  wait  thy  Maker's  will ; 
Then  rise  unchanged,  and  be  an  angel  still  1 " 

Circumstances,  literally  what  stands  around 
a  man,  being  the  offspring  of  general  human 
activity,  react  upon  individual  human  beings 
with  irresistible  effect.  Men  and  circumstances, 
being  of  one  blood,  are  indissolubly  interwoven 
for  weal  or  woe.  Men  make  circumstances, 
and  circumstances  mold  men.  Even  the  most 
original  natures,  natures  of  such  deep  prolific 
power  of  soul  that  their  mission  is  to  generate 
new  circumstances,  whereby  to  lift  human  life 
to  higher  levels,  even  they  cannot  escape  the 
pressure  of  present  conditions. 

One  of  these  generative  minds  was  Samuel 
Taylor  Coleridge,  a  mind  of  such  inward  vital- 
ity that  it  poured  fresh  streams  into  the  accu- 
mulated reservoirs  of  human  thought.  The 
mental  movement  which  at  its  noon  has  the 
exceptional  liveliness  and  momentum  to  gen- 
erate new  circumstances  is  apt  in  its  morning 
to  break  from  routine  into  a  path  of  its  own 
making. 


COLERIDGE.  3 1 

That  in  his  early  surroundings  Coleridge 
was  not  so  favored  as  his  friend  Wordsworth 
is  apparent  from  the  subjoined  account  by 
himself  of  his  childhood  from  his  fourth  to  his 
ninth  year,  Wordsworth,  to  be  sure,  with  his 
decision  and  will,  would  have  so  reacted  upon 
such  surroundings  as  to  have  modified  or  even 
changed  them.  For,  of  those  who  have  in 
them  the  inborn  force  to  make  new  circum- 
stances it  is  the  privilege  (when  they  have  the 
will  and  the  self-control  of  a  Wordsworth)  to 
resist  and  in  some  measure  to  baffle  exist- 
ing ones.  Coleridge  was  more  passive,  more 
practically  helpless  than  his  illustrious  friend. 
This  passage,  so  valuable  as  biography,  is 
worth  something  as  premonition.  But  parents 
and  teachers  are  irremediably  incapable  of 
discerning  in  the  wayward  sensitive  boy  an 
exceptional  poetic  genius,  who  ought  to  have 
exceptional  treatment.  Seldom  does  autobiog- 
raphy furnish  a  page  so  lively  and  instructive. 

"  From  October,  1775,  to  October,  1778. 
These  three  years  I  continued  at  the  reading 
school,  because  I  was  too  little  to  be  trusted 
among  my  father's  school-boys My  fa- 
ther was  very  fond  of  me,  and  I  was  my 
mother's  darling ;   in  consequence  whereof  I 


32  COLERIDGE. 

was  very  miserable.  For  Molly,  who  had 
nursed  my  brother  Francis  [next  above  Sam- 
uel Taylor  in  age],  and  was  immoderately  fond 
of  him,  hated  me  because  my  mother  took 
more  notice  of  me  than  of  Frank ;  and  Frank 
hated  me  because  my  mother  gave  me  now 
and  then  a  bit  of  cake  when  he  had  none,  — 
quite  forgetting  that  for  one  bit  of  cake  which 
I  had  and  he  had  not,  he  had  twenty  sops  in 
the  pan,  and  pieces  of  bread  and  butter  with 
sugar  on  them,  from  Molly,  from  whom  I  re- 
ceived only  thumps  and  ill  names. 

"  So  I  became  fretful,  and  timorous,  and  a 
tell-tale  ;  and  the  school-boys  drove  me  from 
play,  and  were  always  tormenting  me.  And 
hence  I  took  no  pleasure  in  boyish  sports,  but 
read  incessantly.  I  read  through  all  gilt-cover 
little  books  that  could  be  had  at  that  time,  and 
likewise  all  the  uncovered  tales  of  Tom  Hick- 
atJirift,  yack  the  Giaut-Killer,  and  the  like. 
And  I  used  to  lie  by  the  wall,  and  mope  ;  and 
my  spirits  used  to  come  upon  me  suddenly, 
and  in  a  flood ;  and  then  I  was  accustomed  to 
run  up  and  down  the  churchyard,  and  act  over 
again  all  I  had  been  reading  on  the  docks,  the 
nettles,  and  the  rank  grass.  At  six  years  of 
age  I  remember  to  have  read  Belisarius,  Rob- 


COLERIDGE.  33 

iiison  Crusoe,  and  PJiilip  Quarlcs ;  and  then  I 
found  the  Arabian  Nights'  Entcrtainvients,  one 
tale  of  which  (the  tale  of  a  man  who  was  com- 
pelled to  seek  for  a  pure  virgin)  made  so  deep 
an  impression  on  me  (I  had  read  it  in  the 
evening  while  my  mother  was  at  her  needle) 
that  I  was  haunted  by  spectres  whenever  I 
was  in  the  dark  :  and  I  distinctly  recollect  the 
anxious  and  fearful  eagerness  with  which  J 
used  to  watch  the  window  where  the  book  lay, 
and  when  the  sun  came  upon  it  I  would  seize 
it,  carry  it  by  the  wall,  and  bask  and  read. 
My  father  found  out  the  effect  which  these 
books  had  produced,  and  burned  them. 

"  So  I  became  a  dreamer,  and  acquired  an 
indisposition  to  all  bodily  activity ;  and  I  was 
fretful,  and  inordinately  passionate  ;  and  as  I 
could  not  play  at  anything,  and  was  slothful, 
I  was  despised  and  hated  by  the  boys :  and 
because  I  could  read  and  spell,  and  had,  I  may 
truly  say,  a  memory  and  understanding  forced 
into  almost  unnatural  ripeness,  I  was  flattered 
and  wondered  at  by  all  the  old  women.  And 
so  I  became  very  vain,  and  despised  most  of 
the  boys  that  were  at  all  near  my  own  age, 
and  before  I  was  eight  years  old  I  was  a  char- 
acter. Sensibility,  imagination,  vanity,  sloth, 
3 


34  COLERIDGE. 

and  feelings  of  deep  and  bitter  contempt  for 
almost  all  who  traversed  the  orbit  of  my  un- 
derstanding, were  even  then  prominent  and 
manifest. 

"  From  October,  1778,  to  1779.  That  which 
I  began  to  be  from  three  to  six,  I  continued  to 
be  from  six  to  nine.  In  this  year  I  v.'as  ad- 
mitted into  the  Grammar  School,  and  soon 
outstripped  all  of  my  age." 

Here  is  another  relation  of  similar  interest. 
Very  rare  are  such  autobiographic  notes  on 
the  childhood  of  poets.  How  near  were  Chris- 
tabcl  and  the  Ancient  Marine}'-  being  sacrificed 
to  that  tender  sensitiveness,  that  delicacy  of 
cerebral  fibre,  out  of  which  they  grew ! 

"  I  had  asked  my  mother  one  evening  to  cut 
my  cheese  entire,  so  that  I  might  toast  it. 
This  was  no  easy  matter,  it  being  a  cmimbly 
cheese.  My  mother  however  did  it.  I  went 
into  the  garden  for  something  or  other,  and 
in  the  mean  time  my  brother  Frank  minced 
my  cheese,  to  *  disappoint  the  favorite.'  I  re- 
turned, saw  the  exploit,  and  in  an  agony  of 
passion  flew  at  Frank.  He  pretended  to  have 
been  seriously  hurt  by  my  blow,  flung  himself 
on  the  ground,  and  there  lay  with  outstretched 
limbs.     I   hunc:  over-  him  mourninsf  aiid  in  a 


COLERIDGE.  35 

great  fright ;  he  leaped  up,  and  with  a  horse- 
laugh gave  me  a  severe  blow  in  the  face.  I 
seized  a  knife,  and  was  running  at  him,  when 
my  mother  came  in  and  took  me  by  the  arm. 
I  expected  a  flogging,  and,  struggling  from 
her,  I  ran  away  to  a  little  hill  or  slope,  at  the 
bottom  of  which  the  Otter  flows,  about  a  mile 
from  Ottery.  There  I  stayed,  my  rage  died 
away,  but  my  obstinacy  vanquished  my  fears, 
and  taking  out  a  shilling  book,  which  had  at 
the  end  morning  and  evening  prayers,  I  very 
devoutly  repeated  them  —  thinking  at  the 
same  time  with  a  gloomy  inward  satisfaction 
—  how  miserable  my  mother  must  be  !  I  dis- 
tinctly remember  my  feelings,  when  I  saw  a 
Mr.  Vaughan  pass  over  the  bridge  at  about 
a  furlong's  distance,  and  how  I  watched  the 
calves  in  the  fields  beyond  the  river.  It  grew 
dark,  and  I  fell  asleep.  It  was  towards  the 
end  of  October,  and  it  proved  a  stormy  night, 
I  felt  the  cold  in  my  sleep,  and  dreamed  that 
I  was  pulling  the  blanket  over  me,  and  actually 
pulled  over  me  a  dry  thorn-bush  which  lay  on 
the  ground  near  me.  In  my  sleep  I  had  rolled, 
from  the  top  of  the  hill  till  within  three  yards 
of  the  river,  which  flowed  by  the  unfenced 
edge  of  the  bottom.     I  awoke  several  times, 


36  COLERIDGE. 

and  finding  myself  wet,  and  cold,  and  stiff, 
closed  my  eyes  again  that  I  might  forget  it. 

"  In  the  mean  time  my  mother  waited  about 
half  an  hour,  expecting  my  return  when  the 
stilks  had  evaporated.  I  not  returning,  she 
sent  into  the  churchyard,  and  round  the  town. 
Not  found  !  Several  men  and  all  the  boys 
were  sent  out  to  ramble  about  and  seek  me. 
In  vain  !  My  mother  was  almost  distracted ; 
and  at  ten  o'clock  at  night  I  was  cried  by  the 
crier  in  Ottery,  and  in  two  villages  near  it, 
with  a  reward  offered  for  me.  No  one  went  to 
bed  ;  indeed,  I  believe  half  the  town  were  up 
all  the  night.  To  return  to  myself.  About  five 
in  the  morning,  or  a  little  after,  I  was  broad 
awake,  and  attempted  to  get  up  and  walk  ; 
but  I  could  not  move.  I  saw  the  shepherds 
and  workmen  at  a  distance,  and  cried,  but 
so  faintly,  that  it  was  impossible  to  hear  me 
thirty  yards  off.  And  there  I  might  have  lain 
and  died ;  for  I  was  now  almost  given  over, 
the  ponds  and  even  the  river,  near  which  I 
was  lying,  having  been  dragged.  But  provi- 
dentially Sir  Stafford  Northcote,  who  had 
been  out  all  night,  resolved  to  make  one  other 
trial,  and  came  so  near  that  he  heard  me  cry- 
ing.    He  carried  me  in  his  arms  for  nearly  a 


COLERIDGE.  37 

quarter  of  a  mile,  when  we  met  my  father  and 
Sir  Stafford  Northcote's  servants.  I  remem- 
ber, and  never  shall  forget,  my  father's  face  as 
he  looked  upon  me  while  I  lay  in  the  servant's 
arms  —  so  calm,  and  the  tears  stealing  down 
his  face  ;  for  I  was  the  child  of  his  old  age. 
My  mother,  as  you  may  suppose,  was  outrage- 
ous with  joy.  Meantime  in  rushed  a  young 
lady,  crying  out,  '  I  hope  you  '11  whip  him, 
Mrs.  Coleridge.'  This  woman  still  lives  at 
Ottery ;  and  neither  philosophy  nor  religion 
has  been  able  to  conquer  the  antipathy  which 
I  feel  towards  her,  whenever  I  see  her.  I  was 
put  to  bed,  and  recovered  in  a  day  or  so.  But 
I  was  certainly  injured  ;  for  I  was  weakly  and 
subject  to  ague  for  many  years  after." 

One  can  see  the  worthy,  tender-souled  vicar, 
tears  of  joy  stealing  down  his  face.  A  terri- 
ble blow  to  him  would  have  been  the  death  of 
his  dear  little  boy  in  that  way,  and  a  calamity 
to  all  whose  language  is  English  would  have 
been  the  cutting  short  of  a  life  so  laden  with 
literary  genius.  I  beg  to  add  to  that  of  Cole- 
ridge my  detestation  —  a  by  no  means  un- 
philosophical  or  irreligious  feeling  —  of  the 
"young  lady"  with  the  ready  whip.  This  was 
a  hundred   years  ago  in  custom-ridden  Eng« 


38  COLERIDGE. 

land.  To  our  shame  in  America  the  rod  is 
still  legal  in  some  of  our  public  schools.  Colts 
and  cubs  are  trained  and  taught  more  effi- 
ciently through  love  than  through  fear.  What 
then  must  be  the  diabolism  of  the  rod  applied 
to  the  young  immortals  of  human  kind  .-' 

This  excellent  man,  John  Coleridge,  vicar 
of  Ottery  St.  Mary,  and  head-master  of  the 
King's  school,  died  when  his  son,  Samuel  Tay- 
lor, was  in  his  ninth  year.  Connected  with 
his  death  are  two  incidents,  curious  enough 
to  be  retold.  On  his  return  from  Plymouth 
(whither  he  had  been  to  start  his  son  Fran- 
cis for  India  as  midshipman  under  Admiral 
Graves),  arriving  late  in  the  afternoon  at  Exe- 
ter, some  friends  kindly  pressed  him  to  stay 
all  night.  He  declined  because,  although,  as 
he  said,  not  superstitious,  he  had  a  dream  the 
night  before  that  Death  had  appeared  to  him 
and  touched  him  with  his  dart.  When  he 
reached  home  the  family  were  up  to  receive 
him,  all  except  the  youngest,  Samuel  Taylor, 
who  was  asleep  in  bed.  The  vicar  was  in  fine 
spirits  and  apparently  in  good  health,  and  told 
his  wife  his  dream  of  the  night  before.  On 
going  to  bed  he  complained  of  a  pain  in  the 
bowels,  to  which  he  was  subject.     She  gave 


COLERIDGE.  39 

him  some  peppermint ;  he  lay  down  again,  say- 
ing he  was  better.  In  a  few  moments  his  wife 
heard  a  noise  in  his  throat,  and  spoke  to  him ; 
but  he  made  no  answer.  Again  she  spoke, 
and  again,  without  answer.  Her  shriek  awoke 
Httle  Samuel,  who  cried  out,  "  Papa  is  dead  !" 

Thirty  years  afterwards  Coleridge,  referring 
to  the  death  of  his  father,  exclaimed :  "  Oh ! 
that  I  might  so  pass  away,  if,  like  him,  I  were 
an  Israelite  without  guile  !  The  image  of  my 
father,  my  revered,  kind,  learned,  simple-hearted 
father,  is  a  religion  to  me." 

The  death  of  his  father  made  an  important 
change  in  the  schooling  of  Coleridge.  Judge 
Buller,  a  friend  and  former  pupil  of  the  vicar, 
obtained  for  his  son,  Samuel  Taylor,  admission 
into  Christ's  Hospital,  the  celebrated  blue-coat 
free  school  of  London.  Coleridge  was  about 
ten  years  of  age  when  he  went  to  London. 
Before  entering  Christ's  Hospital  he  spent 
two  months  with  his  uncle,  Mr.  Bowdon.  This 
visit  is  thus  described  by  himself  :  "  Mr.  Bow- 
don was  generous  as  the  air,  and  a  man  of 
very  considerable  talents,  but  he  was  fond,  as 
others  have  been,  of  his  bottle.  He  received 
me  with  great  affection,  and  I  stayed  ten  weeks 
at  his  house,  during  which  I  went  occasionally 


40  COLERIDGE. 

to  Judge  Buller's.  My  uncle  was  very  proud 
of  me,  and  used  to  carry  me  from  'coffee-house 
to  coffee-house,  and  tavern  to  tavern,  where  I 
drank,  and  talked,  and  disputed,  as  if  I  had 
been  a  man.  Nothing  was  more  common  than 
for  a  large  party  to  exclaim  in  my  hearing,  that 
I  was  a  prodigy,  and  so  forth  ;  so  that  while  I 
remained  at  my  uncle's  I  was  most  completely 
spoilt  and  pampered,  both  mind  and  body." 

Within  the  walls  of  Christ's  Hospital  were 
then  lodged  seven  hundred  boys,  one  third  of 
them,  like  Coleridge,  the  sons  of  clergymen. 
For  boys,  hardly  less  than  for  girls,  a  daily, 
hourly  need  is  woman's  care  and  affection. 
Of  human  life  love  is  the  very  sun,  that  warms 
and  swells  it  into  bloom.  For  the  opening 
feelings  and  faculties  of  childhood  love  does 
what  solar  rays  do  for  the  sprouting  plant, 
that  would  wither  and  die  without  their  down- 
streaming  parental  glow.  By  removal  from 
the  maternal  fireside  Coleridge  was  not  en- 
tirely cut  off  from  womanly  tenderness.  The 
numerous  school  was  divided  into  twelve  dor- 
mitories with  a  matron  for  each.  Then  there 
was,  in  those  days,  the  head-master's  wife,  a 
woman  with  a  heart  large  enough  to  be  a 
motherly  friend  of   all  the  boys.     A  grateful 


COLERIDGE.  4 1 

memory  of  her  Coleridge  carried  into  his 
latest  years ;  only  a  short  time  before  his 
death  he  thus  spoke  of  her :  "  No  tongue  can 
express  good  Mrs.  Bowyer.  Val  le  Grice  and 
I  were  once  going  to  be  flogged  for  some 
domestic  misdeed,  and  Bowyer  was  thunder- 
ing away  at  us  by  way  of  prologue  when  Mrs. 
B.  looked  in  and  said,  '  Flog  them  soundly, 
sir,  I  beg ! '  This  saved  us.  Bowyer  was  so 
nettled  at  the  interruption  that  he  growled 
out,  *  Away,  woman,  away  ! '  and  we  were  let 
off."  Here  is  also  a  reminiscence,  from  the 
same  page  of  the  Tabic  Talk,  of  Bowyer  him- 
self. "  The  discipline  at  Christ's  Hospital  in 
my  time  was  ultra-Spartan ;  all  domestic  ties 
were  to  be  put  aside.  *  Boy ! '  I  remember 
Bowyer  saying  to  me  once  when  I  was  crying 
the  first  day  of  my  return  after  the  holidays, 
*  Boy  !  the  school  is  your  father  ;  Boy !  the 
school  is  your  mother ;  Boy !  the  school  is 
your  brother  ;  Boy  !  the  school  is  your  sister ; 
the  school  is  your  first  cousin,  and  your 
second  cousin,  and  all  the  rest  of  your  rela- 
tions !     Let 's  have  no  more  crying  ! ' " 

Nevertheless,  Bowyer  may  be  looked  upon 
as  one  of  the  good  fortunes  of  Coleridge's 
life.     An  admirable  instructor,  he  was,  what 


42  COLERIDGE. 

is  very  rare  in  a  professional  pedagogue,  a 
sound,  penetrating  critic,  —  a  superiority  of 
slight  avail  to  the  common  run  of  boy-learners, 
but  of  profound  service  to  one  of  uncommon 
literary  capacity.  Coleridge,  among  whose 
virtues  was  a  cordial  gratefulness,  thus  speaks 
of  Bowyer  in  the  BiograpJiia  Literaria  : 

"At*  school  (Christ's  Hospital)  I  enjoyed 
the  inestimable  advantage  of  a  very  sensible, 
though  at  the  same  time  a  very  severe,  mas- 
ter, the  Reverend  James  Bowyer.  He  early 
molded  my  taste  to  the  preference  of  Demos- 
thenes to  Cicero,  of  Homer  and  Theocritus 
to  Virgil,  and  again  of  Virgil  to  Ovid.  He 
habituated  me  to  compare  Lucretius  (in  such 
extracts  as  I  then  read),  Terence,  and  above 
all  the  chaster  poems  of  Catullus,  not  only 
with  the  Roman  poets  of  the  so-called  silver 
and  brazen  ages,  but  with  even  those  of  the 
Augustan  era :  and  on  the  ground  of  plain 
sense  and  universal  logic  to  see  and  assert 
the  superiority  of  the  former  in  the  truth  and 
nativeness  both  of  their  thoughts  and  diction. 
At  the  same  time  that  we  were  studying  the 
Greek  tragic  poets,  he  made  us  read  Shake- 
speare and  Milton  as  lessons  :  and  they  were 
the  lessons,  too,  which  required  most  time  and 


COLERIDGE.  43 

trouble  to  bring  up,  so  as  to  escape  his  cen- 
sure. I  learned  from  him  that  poetry,  even 
that  of  the  loftiest  and,  seemingly,  that  of  the 
wildest  odes,  had  a  logic  of  its  own,  as  severe 
as  that  of  science ;  and  more  difficult,  because 
more  subtle,  more  complex,  and  dependent  on 
more  and  more  fugitive  causes.  In  the  truly 
great  poets,  he  would  say,  there  is  a  reason 
assignable,  not  only  for  every  word,  but  for  the 
position  of  every  word  ;  and  I  well  remember 
that,  availing  himself  of  the  synonyms  to  the 
Homer  of  Didymus,  he  made  us  attempt  to 
show,  with  regard  to  each,  why  it  would  not 
have  Answered  the  same  purpose,  and  wherein 
consisted  the  peculiar  fitness  of  the  word  in 
the  original  text. 

"  In  our  own  English  composition  (at  least 
for  the  last  three  years  of  our  school  educa- 
tion), he  showed  no  mercy  to  phrase,  metaphor, 
or  image,  unsupported  by  a  sound  sense,  or 
where  the  same  sense  might  have  been  con- 
veyed with  equal  force  and  dignity  in  plainer 
words.  Ltiie,  harp,  and  lyre.  Muse,  Muses,  and 
inspirations,  Pegasns,  Parnassus,  and  Hippo- 
crene,  were  all  an  abomination  to  him." 

In  his  boyhood  Coleridge  was  a  gluttonous 
devourer  of  books,  for  thus  may  be  translated 


44  COLERIDGE. 

the  phrase  he  applies  to  himself,  helluo  libro- 
nim.  It  was  a  diseased,  omnivorous  appetite. 
A  characteristic  incident  opened  the  way  for 
its  boundless  indulgence.  Walking  one  day 
in  the  Strand  with  eyes  half  closed,  the  better 
to  give  play  to  his  inward  senses,  he  imagined 
himself  Leander  swimming  the  Hellespont, 
and  making  the  motions  to  correspond,  one  of 
his  little  hands  came  in  contact  with  the  coat 
pocket  of  a  gentleman,  who,  turning  quickly, 
charged  him  with  a  design  of  pocket-picking, 
but,  looking  into  his  ingenuous  face,  accepted 
at  once  his  denial,  and,  engaging  him  in  talk, 
was  so  struck  with  his  knowledge  and  intelli- 
gence that  he  made  him  free  of  a  circulating 
library  in  King  Street,  CheaiDside.  Here  he 
was  entitled  to  two  volumes  a  day,  and  would 
steal  out  to  get  them.  Then,  crumpling  him- 
self up  into  a  sunny  corner,  he  would  read, 
read,  read!  "Conceive,"  he  says,  "what  I 
must  have  been  at  fourteen."  At  fifteen  "I 
had  bewildered  myself  in  metaphysics  and  in 
theologic  controversy."  So  immersed  and  fas- 
cinated was  he  that  nothing  else  pleased  him. 
History  and  particular  facts  lost  all  interest 
to  his  mind.  Poetry,  and  even  novels  and  ro- 
mances, became  insipid.      In  his  wanderings 


COLERIDGE.  45 

on  leavc-days,  his  greatest  delight  was  to  get 
into  conversation  with  any  passer,  especially 
if  he  were  dressed  in  black,  for  he  soon  di- 
rected the  talk  to  his  favorite  subjects, 

"  Of  providence,  foreknowledge,  will,  and  fate, 
Fixed  fate,  free  will,  foreknowledge  absolute. 
And  found  no  end,  in  wandering  mazes  lost." 

In  after  years  Coleridge  deplored  the  effects 
of  getting  absorbed  into  these  abstruse  argu- 
ments, which,  he  says,  "  exercise  the  strength 
and  subtlety  of  the  understanding  without 
awakening  the  feelings  of  the  heart."  From 
this  unwholesome  pursuit  he  was  withdrawn, 
partly  by  the  accidental  introduction  to  an 
amiable  family,  but  chiefly  by  the  poetry  of 
Bowles,  the  tenderness  and  naturalness  of 
which  were  well  fitted  to  attract  and  influence 
at  that  time  a  precocious,  genial  boy. 

From  want  of  direction  what  waste  of  a 
great  mind's  resources  in  its  early  overflow ! 
In  the  budding  season  genius  needs  sympa- 
thetic guidance,  tender  supervision ;  but  where, 
in  our  actual  organization,  is  to  be  had  the  in- 
sight and  the  sympathy  t  These  are  at  pres- 
ent little  available  for  this  fine  function.  As 
schools  go,  a  Coleridge  was  in  rare  luck  to 


46  COLERIDGE. 

have  fallen  into  the  hands  of  a  genuine  critic 
like  Bowyer.  To  have  founded  at  Christ's 
Hospital  such  a  friendship  as  that  with  Charles 
Lamb  was  another  piece  of  good  fortune.  In 
his  reminiscences  of  these  school-days  Lamb 
exclaims  :  — 

"  Come  back  into  memory,  like  as  thou  wast 
in  the  day-spring  of  thy  fancies,  with  hope  like 
a  fiery  column  before  thee,  —  the  dark  pillar 
not  yet  turned  —  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge, 
Logician,  Metaphysician,  Bard  !  How  have  I 
seen  the  casual  passer  through  the  cloister 
stand  still,  intranced  with  admiration  (while 
he  weighed  the  disproportion  between  the 
speech  and  the  garb  of  the  young  Mirandola) 
to  hear  thee  unfold,  in  thy  deep  and  sweet 
intonations,  the  mysteries  of  lamblichus,  or 
Plotinus  (for  even  in  those  years  thou  waxed 
not  pale  at  such  philosophic  draughts),  or  re- 
citing Homer  in  his  Greek,  or  Pindar,  —  while 
the  walls  of  the  old  Grey  Friars  reechoed  to 
the  accents  of  the  inspired  charity  boy!  " 

By  his  scholarship  and  acquirement  at 
Christ's  Hospital,  during  his  long  abode  there 
of  eight  years,  Coleridge  earned  an  appoint- 
ment, by  the  head-master,  to  Cambridge,  He 
was  eighteen  years  of   age  when  he  entered 


COLERIDGE.  47 

Jesus  College.  In  the  summer  of  1791,  only 
a  few  months  after  his  entrance,  he  gained  the 
gold  medal  for  the  Greek  Ode.  But  at  Cam- 
bridge, as  at  Christ's  Hospital,  he  was  a  vo- 
racious reader  of  miscellaneous  books  rather 
than  a  close .  student  of  the  college  course. 
Mathematics  were  neglected.  He  took  little 
exercise.  His  delight  was  to  talk,  and  this, 
from  his  school-days  to  the  last  year  of  his  life, 
was  his  chief  daily  enjoyment. 

Taking  into  account  the  range  of  his  knowl- 
edge and  of  his  sympathies,  his  flow  of  fittest 
words  and  sure  memory,  the  poetic  light  aglow 
within  him,  which  gave  a  captivating  luminous- 
ness  to  all  the  currents  of  his  affluent  mind, 
together  with  the  innate  logical  exaction  that 
kept  these  currents  within  their  proper  banks, 
and  recalling  the  joyful  facility  he  always  had 
in  the  oral  pouring  forth  of  his  rich  accumula- 
tions, and  not  less  rich  postulations,  it  may  be 
believed  that  Coleridge  was  the  most  eloquent 
and  eminent  and  instructive  talker  told  of  in 
literature. 

This  gift  was  a  magnet  that  at  Cambridge 
drew  such  of  his  fellow-students  as  had  enough 
in  them  to  enjoy  good  talk,  and  made  the  room 
of  Coleridge  ("the  ground-floor  room' on  the 


48  COLERIDGE. 

right  hand  of  the  staircase  facing  the  great 
gate  ")  a  constant  rendezvous,  says  one  of  the 
frequenters.  Those  were  angry  times.  By 
the  heat  of  the  French  Revolution,  then  at 
boihng  point,  were  fast  engendered  passionate 
pamphlets.  Ever  and  anon  came  one  from 
Burke.  There  was  no  need,  says  this  reporter, 
to  have  the  book  present :  Coleridge  had  read 
it  in  the  morning,  and  could  repeat  whole 
pages  in  the  evening  verbatim. 

The  talk  and  studies  had  a  strange  inter- 
ruption. In  the  autumn  of  1793,  from  de- 
spondency on  account  of  some  debts,  aggra- 
vated, it  is  believed,  by  a  love-affair,  Coleridge 
suddenly  left  Cambridge  for  London.  The  few 
shillings  in  his  pocket  were  soon  spent,  and, 
attracted  by  a  recruiting-advertisement,  he  en- 
listed as  a  private  in  the  Fifteenth  Regiment 
of  Light  Dragoons. 

This  extraordinary  step  —  a  leap  in  the 
dark  downwards  —  should  not  be  hastily  im- 
puted to  the  eccentricity  of  genius.  Genius, 
as  the  originator,  the  initiator,  in  human  af- 
fairs, is  eccentric,  flashing  into  new  paths, 
into  fresh  domains,  hereby  giving  proof  of  its 
superiority  through  its  eccentricity.  To  be 
sure,  it  is  liable  to   minor   exhibitions,  which 


COLERIDGE.  49 

are  neither  tokens  of  its  worth  nor  useful  to 
mankind.  But  this  sudden  move  on  the  part 
of  Coleridge  was  due  to  a  kind  of  lawlessness 
caused  by  want  of  strength  to  tighten  the  cords 
that  control  that  helm  of  man's  life,  a  prac- 
tical, resolute  will.  It  came  from  the  man,  not 
from  the  poet.  This  kind  of  eccentricity 
Wordsworth  never  would  have  given  in  to,  nor 
Shelley,  nor  Byron,  nor  Keats,  nor  Milton,  nor 
Shakespeare.  Of  a  more  passive  nature  than 
any  of  these,  his  great  compeers,  was  Cole- 
ridge, with  less  faculty  of  self-direction.  Poets 
are,  of  course,  and  according  to  the  degree  of 
their  creative  force,  more  liable  than  other 
men  to  impulsions  from  within  ;  but  such  pro- 
jection is  on  planes  of  thought,  not  on  planes 
of  action,-  and  in  Coleridge  this  poetic  sensibil- 
ity was  not  accompanied  by  a  strong  enough 
sense  of  the  import  of  outward  movements  in 
the  daily  prosaic  world  of  roofs  and  meals  un- 
der them. 

When  asked  his  name  by  the  enlisting  of- 
ficer, Coleridge  answered,  Qimberback,  a  name, 
he  says,  his  horse  would  have  deemed  most 
suitable,  so  little  equestrian  were  his  habits. 
To  preserve  his  proper  initials,  to  this  he 
prefixed  Silas  Titus.  For  bad  riding  and 
4 


50  COLERIDGE. 

worse  grooming  he  made  amends  in  the  troop 
by  nursing  the  sick  and  writing  letters  for  the 
well.  He  was  a  dragoon  for  four  months. 
One  day  an  officer  found  freshly  written  with 
pencil  on  the  stable  door  :  "  EJieii  !  qiiarn  in- 
fort7inii  miserrimum  est  fuisse  fclicem  !  "  The 
writer  was  discovered  to  be  Cumberback,  whose 
condition  the  words  suited  so  well.  But  the 
termination  of  his  military  career  was  brought 
about  through  his  being  recognized  by  an  ac- 
quaintance on  the  street  in  Reading,  where  the 
regiment  was  stationed.  Information  being 
given  to  his  family,  he  was,  after  some  diffi- 
culty, discharged  on  the  loth  of  April,  1794. 


III. 

An  eventful  year  was  1794  to  Coleridge. 
He  went  back  to  the  University,  and  in  the 
summer-vacation  started  with  a  companion  for 
a  tour  in  Wales,  stopping  on  the  way  in  Ox- 
ford to  see  a  friend.  Here  he  met  Robert 
Southey.  The  two  genial  young  men  took  to 
each  other  warmly.  The  minds  of  both  were 
buoyant  with  literary  projects,  alight  with 
sunny  hopes.  Both  were  hungry  for  knowl- 
edge, eager  to  sharpen  their  minds  on  other 
minds  ;  both  were  aglow  with  refined  aspira- 
tions. Only  a  keen-sighted  observer  could 
then,  in  their  effervescent  young  manhood, 
have  perceived  how  radically  diverse  were  the 
mental  structures  of  these  two.  The  one  was 
to  be  a  versatile,  contemporaneous,  literary 
purveyor,  J:he  other  was  destined  to  rank 
among  the  world's  profoundest  thinkers,  a 
man  whose  thinking  will  be  precious  to  future 
ages  ;  the  one  a  voluminous,  clever  versifier, 
the  other  a  richly-gifted,  exquisite  poet.  The 
comparatively  shallow  mind  of  the  one  could 


52  COLERIDGE. 

impart  little  to  the  deep  creative  resources  of 
the  other.  Nevertheless,  through  his  prudent, 
methodical,  industrious  living,  and  through  his 
generosity  and  affectionateness,  the  versatile 
litterateur  Southey  was  enabled  in  after  years 
to  give  shelter  for  some  time  to  the  family  of 
the  profound,  original,  thriftless  Coleridge. 

Not  the  literary  fruit  it  bore  gave  signifi- 
cance to  the  meeting  with  Southey,  but  its 
practical  consequences  to  the  life  of  Coleridge  ; 
for  it  designated  the  ticket  he  took  in  the  lot- 
tery of  marriage.  After  his  excursion  into 
Wales  he  went  to  Bristol  by  appointment  with 
Southey,  who  here  introduced  him  to  Lovell,  a 
young  Quaker,  just  married  to  Mary  Fricker, 
through  whom  Coleridge  got  acquainted  with 
Sarah,  her  elder  sister,  who  shortly  after  be- 
came his  wife,  Southey  marrying  a  third  sis- 
ter, Edith. 

Under  the  aspiring  impulse  which  has,  at 
different  periods,  moved  other  young  men  to 
make  an  effort  to  emerge  out  of  th^  injustices 
and  artificialities  and  multiform  egoisms  of 
the  actual,  very  imperfect,  social  organiza- 
tion, and  create  around  them  a  healthier,  less 
smothery,  self-loaded  atmosphere,  these  three 
friends  formed  a  plan  to  found  in  America,  on 


COLERIDGE.  53 

the  banks  of  the  Susquehanna,  a  community 
one  of  whose  predominant  principles  should 
be  the  abolition  of  individual  property.  The 
project  came  to  nothing:  it  was  another  pro- 
test against  existing  social  relations,  another 
sigh  for  emancipation  from  obstructive,  debas- 
ing slaveries,  the  chains  of  which,  being  self- 
imposed,  will  some  day  be  shattered.  The 
possibilities  of  man,  even  in  his  earthly  sphere, 
are  almost  infinite.  From  the  customs,  ways, 
conditions  of  Timbuctoo  who  could  infer  the 
conditions  and  institutions,  political,  legal,  mor- 
al, social,  aesthetical,  of  London  or  Paris  or 
New  York  .■*  Out  of  human  upreachings  and 
mental  capabilities  will  be  evolved  social  and 
industrial  conditions  to  which  those  that  the 
most  advanced  of  Christendom  now  enjoy  will 
seem  as  crude  and  insufficient  as  do  to  us  those 
of  Timbuctoo.  And  this  will  be  achieved  by 
cultivated  aspiring  thought,  working  under  the 
sway  of  a  sympathetic  discoverer. 

In  the  beginning  of  September  Coleridge 
quitted  Bath,  where  Southey  then  was,  and 
where  the  Fricker  family  lived,  and  went  back 
for  the  last  time  to  Cambridge.  Here  he  pub- 
lished The  Fall  of  Robespierre,  in  part  written 
by  Southey,  a  tragedy  whose  chief  interest  is 


54  COLERIDGE. 

that  it  was  the  first  poem  published  by  Cole- 
ridge, whose  genius  was  hardly  more  dramatic 
than  that  of  his  friend  Wordsworth.  More- 
over, the  play  was  written  in  the  very  year  of 
the  overwhelming  event  it  commemorates,  an 
event  so  deeply  active  as  to  shake  a  poet's  fac- 
ulties out  of  the  moral  calm  which  is  a  cardinal 
condition  for  poetic  creativeness.  Moreover, 
Coleridge's  part,  a  third  of  the  whole  and  about 
three  hundred  lines,  was  written  in  two  days. 

On  leaving  the  University,  where  he  took 
no  degree,  Coleridge  entered  manhood  vigor- 
ously and  resolutely,  devoting  the  spring  and 
summer  of  1795  to  giving  lectures  in  Bristol. 
The  first  six  presented  a  comparative  view  of 
the  Civil  War  under  Charles  I.  and  the  French 
Revolution,  their  spirit  vehemently  hostile  to 
the  policy  of  Pitt,  but  at  the  same  time  anti- 
Jacobinical.  Another  course  of  six  lectures 
followed  on  "Revealed  Religion,  its  Corrup- 
tions and  its  Political  Views,"  written  in  the 
Unitarian  spirit.  In  his  school-boy  days  of 
omnivorous  reading  Coleridge  had  coquetted 
with  skepticism,  which  the  stout  Bowyer  looked 
upon  as  a  breach  of  the  rules,  demanding,  not 
an  appeal  to  the  brain  with  argument,  but  an 
application  of  birch  to  a  less  noble  part.     In 


COLERIDGE.  55 

his  early  manhood  Coleridge  preached  occa- 
sionally in  a  Unitarian  chapel  in  Taunton,  and 
with  such  eloquence  as  to  draw  crowded  au- 
diences. His  Unitarianism  lasted  but  a  few 
years,  and  his  relapse  into  Orthodoxy  cost  him 
the  good  will  of  Unitarians,  they  never  recov- 
ering from  the  disappointment  of  having  failed 
to  secure,  after  hooking,  this  lively  leviathan. 
Their  spite  they  show  by  a  studied  deprecia- 
tion, of  Coleridge,  which  in  people  of  so  much 
culture  cannot  be  wholly  sincere,  —  a  depre- 
ciation which  is  costly,  inasmuch  as  it  closes 
or  dims  to  them  the  pages  of  one  of  the  rich- 
est writers  and  largest  thinkers  of  all  the  ages. 

On  the  4th  of  October,  1795,  Coleridge  was 
married  to  Sarah  Fricker.  They  went  to  re- 
side for  a  time  at  Clevedon  on  the  Bristol 
Channel. 

This  was  not- a  well  assorted  union.  Cole- 
ridge, with  inordinate  development  of  the  rea- 
soning, emotional,  and  poetic  mental  elements, 
with  deficiency  of  the  determinative  and  the 
self-seeking  impulses,  needed  in  his  life-partner 
the  supplementary  gifts  of  energy  and  will,  to 
make  out  of  two  halves  a  prosperous  conjugal 
whole.  These  gifts  Mrs.  Coleridge  does  not 
seem  to  have  possessed   in  force   enough  to 


56  COLERIDGE. 

counteract  the  practical  inertness  of  her  hus- 
band, to  inspirit  him  under  failures  and  dis- 
couragement. With  a  mind  so  far  ranging, 
original,  poetical,  as  was  that  of  Coleridge,  full 
sympathy  was  not  to  be  looked  for,  nor  was  it 
necessary  on  the  part  of  his  wife  ;  but  Mrs. 
Coleridge  seems  to  have  had  none.  In  this  re- 
spect his  friend  Wordsworth  was  far  more  fa- 
vored, not  to  speak  of  his  noble  sister,  who 
was  a  second  life-partner,  and  an  especial  men- 
tal helpmate.  Nor  was  Wordsworth  deficient 
where  Coleridge  was  :  he  had  a  shrewd  busi- 
ness talent.  When,  some  years  after  Jeffrey's 
impotent  attempt  to  crush  Wordsworth  as  a 
poet,  they  first  met,  at  a  dinner-party  in  Lon- 
don, Jeffrey  said  that  had  he  not  been  told 
who  it  was,  he  should  have  taken  Wordsworth 
for  a  knowing  man  of  the  world. 

Three  days  after  his  marriage  Coleridge, 
his  mind  brimming  with  happiness  and  hope, 
wrote  from  Clevedon  to  a  friend,  that  "from 
their  cottage  he  had  a  variegated  land  and  sea 
view.  Those  were  Coleridge's  few  halcyon 
days.  His  lovely  bride  was  within  the  cot- 
tage ;  his  young,  earnest  brain  teemed  with 
confident  purposes.  His  plan  then  was  to  re- 
turn to  Cambridge,  finish  "  my  great  work  on 


COLERIDGE.  57 

ImitationeSy^  and  then  issue  a  prospectus  for  a 
school.  There  was  some  project  of  a  monthly- 
magazine.  But  that,  he  says  in  the  letter,  he 
gives  up  as  "  a  thing  of  monthly  anxiety  and 
quotidian  bustle."  This  was  written  on  the 
7th  of  October,  1795.  And  yet,  in  Decem- 
ber, only  a  few  weeks  later,  he  set  zealous- 
ly about  to  establish  a  weekly  journal  to  be 
called  The  WatcJinian.  The  design  in  estab- 
lishing The  WatcJivian  was  set  forth  in  its 
motto  :  tJiat  all  might  knozv  the  truth  and  that 
the  truth  might  wake  us  fire.  Not  only  so,  but 
with  a  pocket  full  of  flaming  prospectuses, 
Coleridge  sallied  forth  in  his  own  person  to 
get  subscribers.  In  these  years  of  his  early 
manhood  Coleridge  was  a  Liberal  (not  a  Rad- 
ical) in  politics  and  a  Unitarian  in  religion. 

The  canvassing  for  the  paper  (think  of  the 
author  of  Christabel  thus  engaged  ! )  he  en- 
tered upon  in  Birmingham,  and  his  first  appeal 
was  .to  a  rigid  Calvinist,  a  tallow-chandler,  a 
tall,  dingy  man,  with  lank,  dark,  hard  counte- 
nance. But  he  was  a  true  lover  of  liberty,  and 
had  proved  to  the  satisfaction  of  many  that 
Mr.  Pitt  was  one  of  the  horns  of  the  second 
Beast  in  The  Revelation,  that  spake  as  a  drag- 
on.   After  uttering  some  imperfect  sentences 


58  COLERIDGE. 

his  introducer,  a  citizen  of  Birmingham,  gave 
the  cause  into  the  hands  of  his  principal.  De- 
termined that  no  pains  should  be  spared  on  his 
part,  and  that  he  would  present  his  case  ex- 
haustively, Coleridge  commenced  an  harangue 
of  half  an  hour,  varying  his  notes  through  the 
whole  gamut  of  eloquence  "from  the  ratioci- 
native  to  the  declamatory,  and  in  the  latter 
from  the  pathetic  to  the  indignant.  I  argued, 
I  described,  I  promised,  I  prophesied ;  and  be- 
ginning with  the  captivity  of  nations  I  ended 
with  the  near  approach  of  the  millennium,  fin- 
ishing the  whole  with  some  of  my  own  verses, 
describing  the  glorious  state,  out  of  Religions 
Musingsy  He  thus  concludes  the  humorous 
scene :  "  My  taper  man  of  lights  listened 
with  perseverant  and  praiseworthy  patience, 
though,  as  I  was  afterwards  told,  on  complain- 
ing of  certain  gales  that  were  not  altogether 
ambrosial,  it  was  a  melting  day  with  him. 
'  And  what,  sir,'  he  said,  after  a  short  pause, 
*  might  the  cost  be  .? '  —  *  Only  four-pence,' 
—  (Oh  !  how  I  felt  the  anti-climax,  the  abys- 
mal bathos  of  that  four-pence  !)  — '  only  four- 
pence,  sir,  each  number,  to  be  published  on 
every  eighth  day,'  —  *  That  comes  to  a  deal  of 
money  at  the  end  of  a  year.     And  how  much 


COLERIDGE.  59 

did  you  say  there  was  to  be  for  the  money  ? ' 
—  '  Thirty-two  pages,  sir  !  large  octavo,  closely 
printed.'  —  'Thirty  and  two  pages?  Bless  me! 
why,  except  what  I  docs  in  a  family  way  on 
the  Sabbath,  that's  more  than  I  ever  reads, 
sir  !  all  the  year  round.  I  am  as  great  a  one, 
as  any  man  in  Brummagem,  sir  !  for  liberty 
and  truth  and  all  them  sort  of  things,  but  as  to 
this,  —  no  offense,  I  hope,  sir,  I  must  beg  to 
be  excused.'  " 

Coleridge  made  but  one  more  attempt  in 
person  to  get  subscribers,  and  that  is  described, 
in  the  tenth  chapter  of  the  Biographia  Lite- 
raria,  as  amusingly  as  the  first. 

At  Birmingham  he  preached  twice  to  im- 
mense audiences.  In  a  letter  to  his  friend 
Wade  of  Bristol  he  tells  him  :  "  My  sermons 
(in  great  part  extempore)  were  preciously  pep- 
pered with  politics.  I  have  here  at  least 
double  the  number  of  subscribers  I  expected." 
Indeed,  TJie  Watchman  might  have  been  suc- 
cessful but  for  the  procrastinating  habits  and 
the  constitutional  inertness,  as  to  outward 
things,  of  Coleridge.  Moreover,  he  was  subject 
to  fits  of  deep  melancholy,  during  which  he 
was  like  a  man  imprisoned  who  has  no  hope 
of  liberty. 


6o  COLERIDGE. 

From  Lichfield,  towards  the  close  of  the 
canvassing  tour,  he  wrote  to  Wade  a  letter 
concluding  thus  characteristically  : 

"  I  verily  believe  no  poor  fellow's  idea-pot 
ever  bubbled  up  so  vehemently  with  fears, 
doubts,  and  difficulties,  as  mine  does  at  present. 
Heaven  grant  it  may  not  boil  over  and  put  out 
the  fire !  I  am  almost  heartless.  My  past  life 
seems  to  me  like  a  dream,  a  feverish  dream  — 
all  one  gloomy  huddle  of  strange  actions,  and 
dim-discovered  motives  ;  friendships  lost  by 
indolence,  and  happiness  murdered  by  mis- 
managed sensibility.  The  present  hour  I  seem 
in  a  quick-set  hedge  of  embarrassments.  For 
shame  !  I  ought  not  to  mistrust  God ;  but, 
indeed,  to  hope  is  far  more  difficult  than  to 
fear.     Bulls  have  horns,  lions  have  talons  : 

"  The  fox  and  statesman  subtle  wiles  ensure, 
The  cit  and  polecat  stink  and  are  secure  ; 
Toads  with  their  venom,  doctors  with  their  drug, 
The  priest  and  hedgehog  in  their  robes  are  snug. 
Oh,  Nature  !  cruel  stepmother  and  hard 
To  thy  poor  naked,  fenceless  child,  the  bard  ! 
No  horns  but  those  by  luckless  Hymen  worn, 
And  those,  alas  !  not  Amalthaea's  horn  ! 
With  aching  feelings  and" with  aching  pride, 
He  bears  the  unbroken  blast  on  every  side  ; 
Vampire  booksellers  drain  him  to  the  heart. 
And  scorpion  critics  cureless  venom  dart. 

"  S.  T.  C." 


COLERIDGE.  6 1 

At  Lichfield  he  would  make  no  effort  to  get 
subscribers,  because  he  might  thereby  injure 
the  sale  of  TJie  Iris,  "  the  editor  of  which," 
he  writes,  "  a  very  amiable  and  ingenious 
young  man  of  the  name  of  James  Montgomery, 
is  now  in  prison  for  a  libel  on  a  bloody-minded 
magistrate  there.  Of  course  I  declined  pub- 
licly advertising  or  disposing  of  TJic  Watchman 
in  that  town." 

On  returning  to  Bristol  Coleridge  spent 
February  in  getting  ready  his  first  volume  of 
poems.  Mr.  Cottle  of  Bristol  had  given  him 
thirty  guineas  for  the  copyright.  At  the  same 
time  he  was  preparing  the  first  number  of 
The  Watchmaji,  to  be  issued  on  the  ist  of 
March.  And  his  wife  was  ill.  On  the  22d 
of  February,  1796,  he  writes  to  his  friend 
Cottle  a  plaintive,  despondent,  touching  letter, 
which  opens  thus  :  "  It  is  my  duty  and  busi- 
ness to  thank  God  for  all  his  dispensations, 
and  to  believe  them  the  best  possible  ;  but,  in- 
deed, I  think  I  should  have  been  more  thank- 
ful if  he  had  made  me  a  journeyman  shoe- 
maker instead  of  an  author  by  trade."  After 
a  few  lines  he  continues :  "  I  am  forced  to 
write  for  bread  —  write  the  flights  of  poetic 
enthusiasm,  when  every  minute  I  am  hearing 


62  COLERIDGE. 

a  groan  from  my  wife !  Groans,  and  com- 
plaints, and  sickness  !  The  present  hour  I  am 
in  a  quick-set  hedge  of  embarrassment,  and, 
whichever  way  I  turn,  a  thorn  runs  into  me  ! 
The  future  is  cloud  and  thick  darkness.  Pov- 
erty, perhaps,  and  the  thin  faces  of  them  that 
want  bread  looking  up  to  me  !  Nor  is  this  all. 
My  happiest  moments  for  composition  are 
broken  in  upon  by  the  reflection  that  I  must 
make  haste.  '  I  am  too  late,'  '  I  am  already 
months  behind.'  '  I  have  received  my  pay  be- 
forehand.' —  O  wayward  and  desultory  spirit 
of  Genius,  ill  canst  thou  brook  a  taskmaster  ! 
The  tenderest  touch  from  the  hand  of  obliga- 
tion wounds  thee  like  a  scourge  of  scorpi- 
ons !  " 

The  letter  concludes  as  follows  :  "  If  I  have 
written  petulantly,  forgive  me.  God  knows  I 
am  sore  all  over.  God  bless  you  !  and  be- 
lieve me  that,  setting  gratitude  aside,  I  love 
and  esteem  you,  and  have  your  interest  at 
heart  full  as  much  as  my  own." 

The    Watchman   mounted   guard    over   the 

public  welfare  punctually  on  the  ist  of  March. . 

'On  its  score  Coleridge  soon  began  to  receive 

anonymous  letters.     One  of   these  ran  thus  : 

"Sir,  I  detest  your  principles;    your  prose  I 


COLERIDGE.  63 

think  so  so ;  but  your  poetry  is  so  beautiful 
that  I  take  in  your  Watchman  solely  on  ac- 
count of  it.  In  justice,  therefore,  to  me  and 
some  others  of  my  stamp,  I  entreat  you  to  give 
us  more  verse,  and  less  democratic  scurrility. 
Your  admirer,  not  esteemer." 

Alas  !  The  WatcJiman  kept  its  high  watch 
for  hardly  three  months.  With  the  tenth  num- 
ber it  ceased  to  appear.  Just  before  its  de- 
cease Coleridge  wrote  to  his  friend  Thomas 
Poole  :  "6^  WatcJiman,  thoii  hast  zvatcJied  in 
vain  !  said  the  prophet  Ezekiel,  when,  I  sup- 
pose, he  was  taking  a  prophetic  glimpse  of  my 
sorrow-sallowed  cheeks." 

Poole  was  to  Coleridge  not  only  a  sympa- 
thizing and  generous,  but  an  intellectually  re- 
sponsive, friend,  to  whom  he  pours  out  his 
thoughts  and  feelings  so  confidentially  and 
freely  that  his  letters  to  Poole  have  the  frank- 
ness and  fullness  and  the  naivete  of  a  man 
thinking  aloud  or  speaking  to  himself.  From 
one  written  in  November,  1796,  the  following 
is  an  important  passage  :  — 

"  I  wanted  such  a  letter  as  yours,  for  I  arri 
very  unwell.  On  Wednesday  night  I  was 
seized  with  an  intolerable  pain  from  my  right 
temple  to  the  tip  of  my  right  shoulder,  includ- 


64  COLERIDGE. 

ing  my  right  eye,  cheek,  jaw,  and  that  side  of 
the  throat.  I  was  nearly  frantic,  and  ran  about 
the  house  almost  naked,  endeavoring  by  every 
means  to  excite  sensation  in  different  parts  of 
my  body,  and  so  to  weaken  the  enemy  by  creat- 
ing a  division.  It  continued  from  one  in  the 
morning  till  half-past  five,  and  left  me  pale 
and  fainty.  It  came  on  fitfully,  but  not  so  vio- 
lently, several  times  on  Thursday,  and  began 
severer  threats  towards  night ;  but  I  took  be- 
tween sixty  and  seventy  drops  of  laudanum, 
and  sopped  the  Cerberus  just  as  his  mouth  be- 
gan to  open.  On  Friday  it  only  niggled,  as  if 
the  Chief  had  departed,  as  from  a  conquered 
place,  and  merely  left  a  small  garrison  behind, 
or  as  if  he  had  evacuated  the  Corrica,  and  a 
few  straggling  pains  only  remained.  But  this 
morning  he  returned  in  full  force,  and  his  name 
is  Legion.  Giant-Fiend  of  a  hundred  hands, 
with  a  shower  of  arrowy  death-pangs  he  trans- 
pierced me,  and  then  he  became  a  Wolf  and 
lay  gnawing  my  bones  !  —  I  am  not  mad,  most 
noble  Festus !  but  in  sober  sadness  I  have 
suffered  this  day  more  bodily  pain  than  I  had 
before  a  conception  of.  My  right  cheek  has 
certainly  been  placed  with  admirable  exact- 
ness under  the  focus  of  some  invisible  burn- 


COLERIDGE.  6$ 

ing-glass,  which  concentrated  all  the  rays  of  a 
Tartarean  sun.  My  medical  attendant  decides 
it  to  be  altogether  nervous,  and  that  it  origi- 
nates either  in  severe  application,  or  excessive 
anxiety.  My  beloved  Poole,  in  excessive  anx- 
iety I  believe  it  might  originate.  I  have  a 
blister  under  my  right  ear,  and  I  take  twenty- 
five  drops  of  laudanum  every  five  hours,  the 
ease  and  si^irits  gained  by  which  have  enabled 
me  to  write  to  you  this  flighty,  but  not  exag- 
gerating, account." 

Here  then  was  Coleridge's  first  acquaint- 
ance with  this  smiling  sycophantic  demon, 
masked  in  the  guise  of  a  helper.  How  many 
thousands  of  drunkards  have  been  begotten 
by  unsanctified  prescriptions  of  alcohol  in  cases 
of  disease  !  Certain  constitutions  are  pecul- 
iarly liable  to  be  thus  permanently  poisoned. 
Coleridge  was  of  a  lymphatic  temperament. 
And  when,  in  addition,  we  recollect  how,  in 
his  tenth  year,  he  was  taken  about  by  his 
uncle  from  tavern  to  tavern  in  London,  during 
several  weeks,  "where,"  he  relates,  "I  drank 
and  talked  and  disputed  as  if  I  had  been  a 
man,"  it  behooves  us,  when  we  come  to  the 
disabling  effects  of  opium  in  Coleridge's  mid- 
dle life,  to  be  liberal  of  that  charity  we  ovve  to 
5 


66  COLERIDGE. 

all  men,  and  to  use  an  exceptional  degree  of 
forbearance  towards  one  who  was  not  stoutly 
organized  and  who  was  exceptionally  afflicted 
and  tempted. 

The  seeds  of  those  agonizing  neuralgic  at- 
tacks may  have,  been  planted  when,  a  child  of 
six  years,  he  lay  out  all  night  on  the  damp 
ground.  On  another  occasion,  several  years 
later,  while  at  Christ's  Hospital,  he  swam 
across  a  stream  in  his  clothes  and  let  them 
dry  on  him.  At  no  time  of  his  life  had  Cole- 
ridge quite  an  average  share  of  the  homely 
virtue,  prudence.  He  was  better  equij^ped 
with  wings  than  with  legs  :  he  could  soar  to 
the  region,  and  revel  there,  where  broad  vis- 
ionary reason  overlooks  and  rules  human  af- 
fairs, but  he  could  not  walk  steadily  among 
them,  providing  for  the  smaller  wants  of  the 
day.  In  few  superior  men  has  the  spirit  been 
more  clogged  by  the  body  than  in  Coleridge. 
Irksome  to  him  were  the  stoopings,  the  declen- 
sions, that  have  to  be  made  to  meet  the  neces- 
sities of  the  bodily  being.  Of  him  might  partly 
be  said  what  was  spoken  of  Joubert  by  one  of 
his  lady  friends,  "that  he  seemed  to  be  a  soul 
that  by  accident  had  met  with  a  body  and  tries 
to  make  the  best  of  it." 


COLERIDGE.  67 

In  this  partnership  between  soul  and  body, 
not  only  is  the  soul  the  head  of  the  firm,  as 
furnishing  the  capital  which  gives  credit  and 
power  to  the  house,  but  to  it  is  due  any  popu- 
larity and  acceptability  the  house  enjoys.  To 
his  reach  and  liveliness  of  soul  Coleridge  owed 
not  merely  the  significance  and  attractiveness 
of  his  writings,  prose  and  verse,  but  also  his 
personal  fascination,  which  was  always  re- 
markable, and  which,  in  these  the  days  of  his 
first  failures,  became  the  source  of  nourishing 
streams.  The  noble  Thomas  Poole,  drawn  to 
him  by  the  charm  of  his  genius  and  conver- 
sation, was  serviceable  to  Coleridge  in  other 
ways  than  through  the  sympathy  he  gave  the 
poet  and  thinker,  rare  and  precix)us  as  was  to 
Coleridge  that  sympathy.  A  little  later  the 
two  brothers  Wedgwood,  inventors  and  pros- 
perous manufacturers  of  a  new  tasteful  delft 
ware,  through  admiration  of  Coleridge,  be- 
stowed on  him  an  annuity  of  one  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds,  which  continued  many  years,  and 
the  half  of  which  he  enjoyed  till  towards  the 
end  of  his  life.  In  that  day  one  hundred  and 
fifty  pounds  a  year  was  a  very  substantial  con- 
tribution to  the  housekeeping  fund  of  a  young 
married  couple.  Wordsworth  began  on  a  hun- 
dred pounds. 


68  COLERIDGE. 

A  few  years  later  still,  De  Quincey,  just 
come  of  age,  moved  by  admiration  of  the 
genius  and  extraordinary  mental  powers  of 
Coleridge,  made  him  an  anonymous  gift  of 
three  hundred  pounds,  through  the  interme- 
dium of  a  common  friend,  Cottle,  the  book- 
seller of  Bristol.  A  most  timely  relief  was 
this  generous  gift,  for  Coleridge  was  then 
much  embarrassed  and  depressed,  notwith- 
standing that  a  short  time  before  he  had  re- 
ceived in  one  year  eight  hundred  pounds  as 
Secretary  to  the  Governor  of    Malta. 

A  good  story  is  told  by  Coleridge  of  him- 
self and  a  Jew.  More  than  usually  annoyed 
one  day  in  London  by  the  nasal  monotony  of  a 
crier  of  old  .clothes,  he  went  up  to  him  and 
said  :  "  Pray,  why  can't  you  say  Old  Clothes  as 
I  do  ?  "  The  Jew  stopped,  and  looking  gravely 
at  his  reprover,  said  in  a  clear  and  even  fine 
tone  :  "  Sir,  I  can  say  Old  Clothes  as  well  as 
you  can,  but  if  you  had  to  say  so  ten  times  a 
minute  for  an  hour  together,  you  would  say 
Ogh  Clo  as  I  do  :  "  and  then  walked  on.  So 
confounded  was  Coleridge  by  the  justice  of 
the  retort,  that  he  ran  after  the  man,  and  gave 
him  a  shilling,  the  only  one  he  had.  That 
shilling  being  the  last  is  as  characteristic  as 


COLERIDGE.  69 

•the  generous  impulse  to  give  it  to  the  wfonged 
Jew,  Money  burned  in  Coleridge's  pocket. 
It  may  be  doubted  whether,  with  his  organiza- 
tion, any  probable  provision  —  say  an  annuity 
of  four  hundred  pounds  instead  of  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  pounds  —  would  have  secured 
him  against  occasional  pinching  for  want  of 
a  guinea  or  a  shilling.  Some  grandly  gifted 
men  are  irremediably  thus  constituted.  Dan- 
iel Webster  was  also  a  victim  of  this  magnani- 
mous impecuniosity,  which  has  a  noble  air  of 
large-handedness  in  contrast  with  the  minute 
meannesses  of  avarice,  but  which  closes  the 
hand  to  many  a  generous  opportunity,  and 
constrains  an  honorable  man  to  doings  that 
bring  a  blush  to  his  cheek.  Coleridge  was  a 
rich-toned,  sonorous,  high-wrought  harp,  with 
some  of  the  strings  incorrigibly  unstrung. 


IV. 

Notable  years  in  the  life  of  Coleridge  were 
1797  and  1798.  In  1797  he  took  a  house  in 
Nether  Stowey,  near  the  TBristol  Channel,  and 
Wordsworth  established  himself  at  Alfoxden, 
a  pleasant  country-house  among  the  Quantoc 
hills,  in  order  to  be  near  him. 

The  friendship  between  Goethe  and  Schiller 
was  entered  upon  when  Goethe  was  in  his 
forty-fifth  and  Schiller  in  his  thirty-iifth  year, 
and,  though  begun  at  so  comparatively  late  a 
period,  was  prolific  of  good  to  both.  Close  con- 
tact with  a  younger  aspiring  poet  rekindled  in 
Goethe  his  poetic  fires,  which  for  some  time 
had  been  smoldering.  Schiller's  intellectual 
horizon  was  enlarged  by  the  far  outlook  and 
experience  of  his  friend,  while  his  poetic  aims 
gained  in  definiteness  and  fidelity.  When 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  became  intimate 
friends  Coleridge  was  in  his  twenty-sixth  year, 
and  Wordsworth  two  years  older.  To  both 
the  brilliant  boundless  realm  of  poetry  was  un- 
folding its  unspeakable  attractions.     And  so 


COLERIDGE.  7 1 

on  the  mind  of  his  companion  each  beheld 
mirrored  objects  and  vistas  in  this  reahii,  the 
whole  wondrous  region  was  doubly  illuminated. 
What  Coleridge  thought,  twenty  years  later,  of 
the  poetic  faculty  and  performance  of  Words- 
worth is  recorded  in  several  successive  chap- 
ters of  the  BiograpJiia  Literai'ia,  chapters  which 
embody  some  of  the  truest  and  highest  criti- 
cism, and  as  profound  an  exposition  of  aes- 
thetic principles  as  was  ever  written. 

So  intimate  was  at  this  time  between  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge  interchange  of  thought, 
so  cordial  their  association,  so  close  their  aes- 
thetic concord,  that  they  undertook  to  write  a 
poem  conjointly.  Of  this  the  impracticability 
showed  itself  at  the  very  outset.  In  a  great 
poet  the  current  of  inspiration  flows  from  too 
individual  a  spring  and  with  too  strong  a  mo- 
mentum to  accommodate  itself  to  the  move- 
ment of  another  inspiration  ;  and  when  that 
other  is  as  fresh  and  vigorous  as  its  own,  the 
two  poets  at  once  discover  that  between  them 
there  can  be  no  cooperation  upon  the  same 
poem.  When  to  talent  more  than  to  genius  is 
due  the  efficiency  of  two  poets,  such  coopera- 
tion may  be  successful.  In  Coleridge  and 
Wordsworth  genius  used  talent  as  its  instru- 


72  COLERIDGE. 

ment ;  and  it  was  owing  to  deficiency  of  talent 
in  certain  directions  that  Wordsworth's  genius 
was  not  more  effective. 

This  was  the  era  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads.  If 
genius  forbade  the  combining  of  their  poetic 
forces  for  a  joint  achievement,  by  their  contact 
and  congenial  converse  the  genius  of  each  was 
enlivened  and  inflamed,  and  empowered  for  in- 
dependent effort.  Now  it  was  that  Coleridge 
produced  the  poems  commented  upon  in  the 
opening  chapter.  Of  these  poems  a  character- 
istic is  their  objectivity.  The  French  Revolu- 
tion, and  the  mental  movement  which  engen- 
dered it,  developed,  stimulated  individuality. 
The  more  susceptive  the  mind,  the  more  liable 
was  it  to  be  rapt  into  this  cyclone  of  thought 
and  feeling,  which  promised  to  sweep  away  all 
barriers  and  obstructions  to  individual  free- 
dom. Poets  were  filled,  inspired,  by  the  prom- 
ises of  the  time.  In  Wordsworth  subjectiv- 
ity took  the  form  of  sympathy  for  the  poor, 
which  was  a  broad  and  noble  feature  of  the 
new  spirit.  In  him  this  influence  was  facili- 
tated by  the  republican  and  primitive  habits  of 
Cumberland  and  Westmoreland,  where  he  was 
born  and  brought  up.  At  the  same  time  his 
intense  self-consciousness  made   it   easy,  nay, 


^ 


COLERIDGE.  73 

inevitable,  for  him  to  imbue  his  poetry  with 
his  personality.  On  every  page  of  Shelley, 
who  came  two  decades  later,  the  noblest  feat- 
ure in  the  movement  of  the  age  is  impressed, 
in  the  form  of  fiery  jorotest  against  tyranny,  of 
a  deep  yearning  for  emancipation.  In  Byron's 
verse  much  of  the  restlessness  and  tumult  of 
the  age  finds  expression ;  but  it  is  through  the 
strength  of  his  egoism  that  he  is  the  most  sub- 
jective of  the  brilliant  band  of  poets  of  that 
upheaving  period.  His  Laras  and  Giaours  and 
CJiilde  Harolds  are  but  superficially  variegated 
reduiDlications  of  himself. 

Some  people  have  not  enough  of  disinter- 
ested sympathy,  of  generic  breadth,  to  be  able 
to  swing  themselves  beyond  the  circuit  of  their 
individuality.  They  get  at  last  to  be  imjDris- 
oned  in  themselves,  —  the  most  awful  form  of 
solitary  confinement.  Byron  is  the  poetic  rep- 
resentative of  this  self-entombed  class.  He 
is  the  opposite  of  Shakespeare.  Byron's  per- 
sonages are  mirrors  in  which  he  sees  himself ; 
Shakespeare  is  himself  a  mirror,  in  which  his 
personages  are  reflected.  Shakespeare  is  in 
all  his  personages  because  all  humanity  is  in 
him.  How  unlike  Byron  is  to  Shakespeare 
let  himself  declare.      In  the   Introduction   to 


74  COLERIDGE. 

Sardanapahis  is  this  sentence  :  "  You  will  find 
all  this  very  ?/wlike  Shakespeare  ;  and  so  much 
the  better  in  one  sense,  for  I  look  upon  him  to 
be  the  worst  of  models,  though  the  most  ex- 
traordinary of  writers.  It  has  been  my  object 
to  be  as  simple  and  severe  as  Alfieri,  and  I 
have  broken  down  the  poetry  as  nearly  as  I 
could  to  common  language."  Here  is  subjec- 
tivity with  a  vengeance  !  That  "  ?^;/like  Shake- 
speare "  came  from  a  thought,  and  not  a  mo- 
mentary thought,  of  likeness.  Shakespeare 
is  not  called  the  greatest  of  poets,  but  the 
most  extraordinary  of  writers.  The  greatest 
of  poets  is  another  Englishman.  To  reject 
Shakespeare  as  a  bad  model,  and  take  the 
juiceless  Alfieri  as  a  good  one!  Were  this  a 
study  of  Byron,  pages  of  comment  might  be 
written  on  this  one  characteristic,  most  signifi- 
cant passage. 

The  opposite  of  Byron  in  feeling  towards 
Shakespeare,  Coleridge  had  not  the  jDresump- 
tion  to  be  jealous  of  the  mightiest  of  poets. 
He  kindled  his  own  great  faculties  to  their 
brightest  to  pour  light  upon  the  master's  page 
in  rich,  most  discriminative  eulogy.  Straining 
to  make  admiration  come  up  to  Shakespeare's 
unparalleled  performance,  he  coined  a  grand 


COLERIDGE.  75 

new  epithet  to  be  applied  solely  to  him,  — 
myriad-in  inded. 

Like  Shakespeare  himself,  and  unlike  By- 
ron, was  Coleridge  in  the  objectivity  of  his 
mind's  movement.  His  was  not  a  nature  that 
is  self-busied  while  depicting  imaginary  per- 
sons and  scenes.  In  presence  of  large  or 
lively  themes,  the  self  in  him  was  effaced.  In 
its  poetic  flights,  his  imagination  freed  itself 
from  personality.  This  was  not  owing  to  the 
largeness  of  his  intellect,  or  to  the  power  of 
his  poetic  imagination,  but  to  the  sobriety  of 
his  self-seeking  impulses.  Coleridge  was  the 
opposite  of  a  self-sufficient  man  ;  there  was  no 
assumption,  no  arrogance,  in  him.  In  Words- 
worth there  was,  and  in  Byron  inordinate  van- 
ity ;  and  these  were  largely  the  sources  of 
their  subjectivity  as  poets,  — a  subjectivity  dif- 
fering in  quality  and  degree  in  the  two,  being 
more  intense  in  Byron,  saturating  most  of  his 
poems  with  himself,  while  imbuing  many  of 
Wordsworth's  with  the  spirit  of  the  times. 

Now  in  CJiristabel,  The  Ancient  Mariner,  and 
Knbla  Khan  there  is  not  a  trace,  neither  of 
the  yearnings  and  asjDirations  of  the  French 
Revolution  period,  nor  of  personal  characteris- 
tics.    They  belong  to  no  age  or  country ;  their 


'jfS  COLERIDGE. 

personages  and  conditions,  while  warmly  hu- 
man, have  on  them  no  soilure  of  the  earth ; 
they  are  woven  out  of  poetic  sunbeams.  They 
are  creations  of  imaginative  potency,  more 
sparkling  with  the  ethereal  essence  of  poetic 
life  than  any  product  from  any  of  his  great 
contemporaries,  except  Shelley. 

The  friendship  between  Wordsworth  and 
Coleridge  led  to  their  making  a  trip  to  Ger- 
many together.  Coleridge  had  at  times  in  his 
mind  the  vision  of  a  select  school  to  be  kept 
by  him.  To  accomplish  himself  more  thor- 
oughly for  this  duty  was  part  of  his  motive 
for  going  to  Germany  and  Gottingen.  The 
school  never  came  to  be  more  than  a  scheme. 
Coleridge  was  a  man  of  unexecuted  projects 
in  practical  life,  in  philosophy,  and  in  poetry. 
The  difference  between  the  ease  and  rapidity 
of  imaginary  work  —  especially  to  a  mind  so 
copious  and  creative  as  his  —  and  the  labor 
and  slowness  of  execution,  the  difference  be- 
tween building  in  the  brain  and  building  on 
the  ground,  was  never  more  distinctly  exhib- 
ited than  in  the  case  of  Coleridge.  But,  unlike 
most  visionaries,  there  was  solidity  as  well  as 
splendor  in  his  thoughts.  So  stored  are  these 
with  learning  and  knowledge,  and,  what  is  bet- 


COLERIDGE.  77 

ter  than  either,  with  wisdom,  that  his  volumes 
are  among  the  most  valuable,  as  well  as  the 
most  brilliant,  in  our  language, 

I  was  at  Gottingen  a  quarter  of  a  century 
later  than  Coleridge.  Professor  and  Librarian 
Benecke,  my  very  capable  teacher  of  German, 
then  a  man  of  nearly  sixty,  told  me  that  when 
the  Confessions  of  an  Opinm-Eater  appeared, 
he  attributed  it  to  Coleridge,  because  when  at 
Gottingen  he  took  opium.  The  terrible  drug, 
taken  at  first  as  medicine,  transformed  from  a 
soother  of  pain  into  a  syren  of  destruction,  had 
now  laid  its  enduring  spell  upon  another  illus- 
trious victim. 

Benecke  related  how  Coleridge,  shortly  after 
his  arrival,  would  declaim  in  German  one  of 
Klopstock's  odes,  mystifying  his  English  fellow- 
students  into  the  belief  that  he  had  mastered 
it.  But  Coleridge,  before  going  to  Gottingen, 
had  passed  several  weeks  at  Ratzeburg,  daily 
busied,  no  doubt,  with  dictionary  and  gram- 
mar. 

Before  he  went  to  Germany,  Coleridge,  as 
we  have  seen,  had  written  some  of  his  best 
poems.  Wordsworth  thought  that  by  his  visit 
to  Germany  he  was  drawn  astray  from  poetry 
into    metaphysics.      By    learning   German    he 


78  COLERIDGE. 

was  enabled  to  read  Kant  and  Schelling  ;  but 
it  appears  that  he  did  not  give  in  to  the  study 
of  them  until  some  years  later,  Superior  as 
well  as  inferior  men  are  liable  to  all  kinds  of 
influences,  sometimes  injurious  influences  ;  but 
is  a  man  of  the  high  poetic  originality,  the 
deep  inwardness,  of  Coleridge  likely  to  be  in- 
juriously affected,  to  the  degree  that  Words- 
worth affirms,  by  external  attractions  ?  We 
have  seen  how,  even  in  his  boyhood,  he  be- 
came absorbed  in  speculative  thinkers.  He 
had  a  metaphysical  as  well  as  a  poetic  genius. 
To  regret  that  he  did  not  write  more  Christa- 
bels  and  Ancient  Mariners  were  not  only  idle, 
but  ungrateful.  Few  writers  have  left  to  their 
fellow-men  so  much  that  is  good  as  Coleridge 
has.  Not  only  should  we  thankfully  hug  what 
he  has  given,  without  grumbling  that  he  gave 
no  more,  but  it  were  perhaps  wise  to  conclude 
that  he  gave  us  all  he  had  to  give.  A  lesser 
poet  could  not  have  written  Christabel,  from 
defect  of  poetic  imagination.  Coleridge  left 
Christabel  unfinished,  from  defect  of  other 
qualities  than  poetic  imagination.  Had  he 
possessed  these  qualities  to  the  degree  he  did 
that,  they  would  have  rounded  him  to  a  super- 
human perfection.     Some  of  his  inherent  inev- 


COLERIDGE.  "Ji) 

itable  human  deficiency  lay  behind  the  opium 
and  hfted  it  to  his  lips. 

The  first  fruit  of  his  German  studies  was  a 
translation  of  Schiller's  Wallcnstein,  a  trilogy, 
the  three  parts  being  Wallcnstein  s  Camp,  The 
Piccoltiomini,  and  Wallenstchi  s  Death.  The 
Camp  is  introductory,  is  written  in  rhyme,  and 
depicts  the  heterogeneous  character  and  the 
lawlessness  of  Wallenstein's  army,  together 
with  its  devotion  to  and  belief  in  its  General. 
This  Coleridge  did  not  translate  on  account  of 
the  difficulty  of  rendering  it  with  fidelity  and 
at  the  same  time  with  spirit.  TJie  Piccoluo- 
vii]ii  and  Wallenstein's  Death  are  two  separate 
plays,  each  of  five  acts.  Without  aiming  to 
detract  from  the  great  merit  of  Schiller's  mas- 
terpiece, I  cannot  but  think  that,  had  the  two 
plays  been  compressed  into  one  under  the 
name  of  Wallenstein,  a  more  intense,  a  higher 
and  more  poetical,  work  of  Art  might  have 
been  produced. 

Schiller  has  the  rare  good  fortune  to  have 
his  greatest  drama  translated  into  a  cognate 
tongue  by  one  who,  himself  a  poet,  executed 
his  labor  of  love  with  the  zeal  of  genius.  Cole- 
ridge is,  indeed,  superior,  both  as  poet  and  as 
thinker,  to   Schiller  himself.     The  translation, 


80  COLERIDGE. 

0 

made  from  manuscript,  was  published  in  Lon- 
don simultaneously  with  the  original  in  Ger- 
many. Coleridge  was  probably  hurried,  in  or- 
der to  be  up  to  time.  There  are  frequent 
marks  of  haste,  especially  in  the  want  of  con- 
densation, and  in  the  use  of  polysyllabic  Latin- 
English,  instead  of  monosyllabic  Saxon-Eng- 
lish. The  translation  had  hardly  any  sale,  and 
so  Coleridge  had  no  opportunity  for  remedy- 
ing the  defects  caused  by  haste. 


V. 

When  Coleridge,  at  the  close  of  the  last 
century,  returned  from  Germany,  armed  with 
a  new  language  and  a  new  literature,  he  was 
in  his  twenty-ninth  year,  he  was  in  the  bloom 
of  an  uncommonly  rich  young  manhood.  Into 
the  lively  arena,  where  great  principles  were 
then  interlocked  in  a  death -grapple,  no  man  in 
England  of  that  wakeful  period  brought  more 
mental  force,  more  intellectual  accomplishment. 
Mr.  Stuart,  the  active,  able  conductor  of  The 
Morning  Post,  for  which  paper  Coleridge  was 
engaged  to  write,  declared,  many  years  after, 
in  reviewing  his  connection  with  Coleridge 
at  that  period :  "  To  write  the  leading  para- 
graph of  a  newspaper  I  would  prefer  Cole- 
ridge to  Mackintosh^  Burke,  or  any  man  I  ever 
heard  of.  His  observations  not  only  were 
confirmed  by  good  sense,  but  displayed  ex- 
tensive knowledge,  deep  thought,  and  well- 
grounded  foresight ;  they  were  so  brilliantly 
ornamented,  so  classically  delightful.  They 
were  the  writings  of  a  scholar,  a  gentleman, 
6 


82  COLERIDGE. 

and  a  statesman,  without  personal  sarcasm  or 
illiberality  of  any  kind.  But  when  Coleridge 
wrote  in  his  study  without  being-  pressed,  he 
wandered  and  lost  himself.  He  should  always 
have  had  the  printer's  devil  at  his  elbow  with 
Sir,  the  printers  want  copy!' 

Irresolution  caused  by  bad  health  is  not 
enough  to  account  for  the  failures  of  Cole- 
ridge. He  seems  to  have  been  deficient  in 
what  the  phrenologists  call  concentrativeness, 
the  faculty  of  holding  the  intellect  continu- 
ously to  its  task.  Opium,  no  doubt,  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  the  inaptitude  for  steady 
work.  The  pretended  cure  for  disease  be- 
came the  generator  of  worse  disease.  The 
want  of  will  to  resist  the  fascination  of  the  dis- 
guised demon  gave  this  demon  the  power  to 
dethrone  an  ill-guarded  will.  On  another  oc- 
casion, a  few  years  later,  speaking  of  what 
Coleridge  wrote  for  The  Courier  about  the  war 
in  Spain,  Mr.  Stuart  said  :  "  Could  Coleridge 
have  written  the  leading  paragraph  daily  his 
services  would  have  been  invaluable,  but  an 
occasional  essay  could  produce  little  effect." 

From  a  successful  conductor  of  London 
daily  newspapers  this  is  strong  testimony  as 
to  the  capability  of  Coleridge.     To  those  who 


COLERWGE.  83 

now  read  his  prose-volumes,  with  that  high 
enjoyment  imparted  by  the  pages  of  Plato, 
drawing  from  him  the  calm  inspiration  of  pro- 
found and  spiritual  thoughtfulness,  it  seems 
almost  incredible  that  the  same  man  was  able 
to  produce,  in  their  most  effective  potency, 
those  stirring  paragraphs  best  fitted  to  spur 
men's  minds  to  instant  action. 

In  1804  Coleridge,  on  account  of  ill  health, 
and  to  visit  a  friend,  made  a  voyage  to  Malta. 
Here  he  became  intimate  with  a  superior 
man.  Sir  Alexander  Ball,  Governor  of  Malta, 
who  made  Coleridge  for  a  time  his  secretary. 
From  Malta  he  went  to  Rome,  where  he  met 
Allston.  Congenial  spirits  were  these  two, 
both  splendidly  gifted,  richly  poetical  as  well 
as  intellectual,  and  both  spiritually-minded. 
Two  or  three  years  before  he  died,  Allston,  in 
his  studio  at  Cambridgeport,  on  my  mention- 
ing Coleridge,  spoke  of  him  with  revereace  as 
well  as  intense  admiration  :  "  The  greatest 
man  that  ever  I  accosted."  In  uttering  these 
words  his  voice  fell  and  his  manner  grew  al- 
most solemn,  as  though  for  the  moment  his 
vision  had  before  it  his  great  friend.  Other 
eminent  contemporaries  who  came  in  contact 
with    him    (and    the    closer    the    contact    the 


84  COLERIDGE. 

Stronger  the  impression)  were  similarly  im- 
pressed by  his  presence  and  converse.  Charles 
Lamb,  who  admired  not  less  than  he  loved 
Coleridge,  called  him,  with  Lamb's  peculiar 
humor,  "  an  archangel  a  little  damaged."  The 
scholarly,  eloquent  De  Quincey,  with  a  dash 
of  that  polished  exaggeration  into  which  he  is 
occasionally  seduced,  speaks  of  him  as  "  the 
largest  and  most  spacious  intellect,  the  subtlest 
'and  most  comprehensive,  in  my  judgment,  that 
has  yet  existed  amongst  men."  Wordsworth 
says  :  "  The  only  wonderful  man  I  ever  knew 
was  Coleridge," 

Coleridge  quitted  Rome  suddenly,  on  a  con- 
fidential hint  that  Napoleon  had  ordered  his 
arrest.  That  such  an  order  was  given  has  been 
denied,  on  the  ground  that  the  King-crush- 
ing Emperor  would  not  have  condescended 
to  notice  the  then  unknown  private  English- 
man. But  Napoleon  was  as  minute  as  he  was 
unscrupulous  in  the  instrumentalities  of  his 
despotism,  and  had  all  the  hate  and  dread  in- 
stinctive to  despots,  of  independent  thinkers 
and  bold  men  of  genius,  —  a  feeling  deepened 
in  this  case  by  his  hatred  of  England.  His 
spies  and  informers  were  everywhere.  In  1802 
and  1803  Coleridge  wrote  in  The  Morning  Posi 


COLERIDGE.  85 

against  him,  and  we  know  how  watchful  Na- 
poleon was,  especially  in  those  years  of  transi- 
tion, of  the  London  newspapers,  and  how  sen- 
sitive to  their  comments.  The  order  may  not 
have  been  issued,  but  the  reason  cited  above 
for  its  non-issue  is  assuredly  unsound. 

Coleridge,  acting  on  the  hint  given  him, 
made  his  way  to  Leghorn,  where  he  took  pas- 
sage in  an  American  vessel  bound  to  England. 
They  were  chased  by  a  French  cruiser,  and 
the  captain  obliged  Coleridge  to  throw  over 
board  his  papers,  —  a  precautionary  measure 
not  creditable  to  the  captain  of  the  American 
merchantman,  and  one  less  likely  to  be  re- 
sorted to  in  1876  than  in  1806.  Coleridge  thus 
lost  all  the  notes  he  had  taken  at  Rome. 

On  returning  to  England  he  went  back  to 
reside  at  Keswick,  where  he  had  left  his  family 
on  starting  for  Malta.  At  this  period  he  was 
again  much  with  Wordsworth,  who  then  had  a 
cottage  at  Grasmere,  thirteen  miles  from  Kes- 
wick. To  one  so  poetically  gifted,  so  richly 
endowed,  so  highly  cultivated,  this  decade  of 
his  life,  between  his  thirty-fifth  and  forty-fifth 
years,  ought  to  have  been,  and  might  have 
oeen,  a  period  of  joyous  mental  activity  and 
productiveness   and   manful   expansion.      But 


86  COLER/DGE. 

Coleridge  was  restless,  unhappy,  irresolute,  de- 
pressed. For  years  he  was  the  sorrowful,  ab- 
ject slave  to  opium.  By  this  accursed  habit 
his  health  and  spirits  were  blasted,  his  plans 
frustrated,  his  undertakings  baffled,  his  use- 
fulness crippled,  his  conscience  seared.  En- 
gaged by  the  Royal  Society  to  deliver  a  course 
of  lectures  on  Poetry  and  Art,  the  intelligent, 
refined  audience  had  sometimes  to  be  dismissed 
on  the  plea  of  the  sudden  illness  of  the  lect- 
urer. The  performance  of  his  duties  at  the 
Courier  office,  where  he  was  engaged  to  write, 
was  irregular. 

Coleridge,  clogged  in  his  movement  by  this 
impure  habit,  is  as  though  an  eagle,  snatching 
from  the  ground  a  polecat,  should  become  so 
infatuated  with  its  odor  as  not  to  be  able  to 
drop  it  when  he  found  his  flight  impeded.  — 
This  starts  a  reflection.  The  eagle,  though  by 
his  size  and  strength,  by  the  elevation  and 
range  of  his  winged  sweep,  the  first  among  the 
fowls  of  the  air,  is  a  bird  of  prey.  So  there 
are  human  beings,  and  some  among  the  strong- 
est, who  are  men  of  prey.  Foremost  among 
these  was  Bonaparte,  and  therefore  most  fitting 
it  was  that  he  should  adopt  as  his  Imperial 
emblem  the  eagle,  borrowing  it  from  Rome. 


COLERIDGE.  8/ 

Rome,  as  a  conquering  nation,  is  to  be  classed 
among  animals  of  prey.  Thence  the  eagle  is 
not  a  suitable  emblem  for  the  United  States, 
for  we  are  not  a  conquering  nation.  Our 
aims  are  other  than  the  ravenous  devouring  of 
neighbors,  and,  to  bring  our  national  emblem 
into  harmony  with  our  nature  and  principles, 
we  should  discard  a  carnivorous  bird  of  prey, 
leaving  the  eagle  to  Prussia  and  Austria  and 
Russia,  all  of  whom  have  with  a  sound  instinct 
chosen  it  ;  leaving,  too,  to  England  her  prowl- 
ing, voracious  lion.  —  To  return  to  Coleridge, 
from  whom  this  eagle-flight  has  borne  us 
away. 

Through  TJie  Watc/unan,  a  dozen  years  ear- 
lier, he  had  had  proof  of  his  unfitness  to  con- 
duct a  paying  periodical  work,  —  an  unsuita- 
bleness  due  to  the  deep  alternations  in  his 
health  and  spirits,  to  his  procrastinating  hab- 
its, to  the  elevated  range  and  ideal  aim  of  his 
thoughts.  Untaught  by  this  trial,  about  the 
year  1810  he  issued  the  first  number  of  The 
Friend,  the  object  of  which  was  to  present  and 
unfold  first  principles  in  philosophy,  politics, 
ethics,  literature. 

The  wide  and  lofty  scope  of  TJic  Friend  is  an 
exponent  of  its  projector.     The  mental  life  of 


88  COLERIDGE. 

Coleridge  was  in  the  deep  places  and  the  high 
places  of  being.  So  impressed  was  he  with 
the  power  and  grandeur  of  generative  ideas, 
so  possessed  by  them,  so  intimate  with  them, 
that  he  was  ever  striving  to  share  them  with 
others,  to  imbue  the  educated  and  thoughtful 
with  them,  and  thus  elevate  mankind  through 
the  force  and  beauty  there  is  in  fundamental 
divine  principles.  His  ascensions  and  ranges 
were  like  those  of  the  mountain-haunting,  sky- 
piercing  eagle,  but  alas  !  unlike  those  of  the 
eagle,  his  were  not  predatory,  and  brought  no 
food  to  his  eyrie. 

It  were  easy  to  wish  that  he  had  been  more 
earthly-minded,  had  practiced  a  little  more 
worldly  prudence.  By  this  deficiency  his  fam- 
ily and  contemporary  friends  could  not  but  be 
pained  and  provoked.  They,  no  doubt,  did 
what  they  could  to  remedy  it ;  but  for  us,  his 
posterity,  the  heirs  of  rich  legacies,  it  becomes 
us  to  be  reserved  and  thankful.  To  throw  re- 
proachfully, even  at  a  living  fellow-man,  the 
commonplaces  about  duty  is  not  a  profitable 
proceeding,  is,  indeed,  immoral,  weakening  the 
thrower  through  assumption  and  self-flattery, 
and  irritating  rather  than  correcting  the  delin- 
quent.   Moments  there  are  when  the  assertion 


COLERIDGE.  89 

of  moral  principles  is  appropriate  and  impera- 
tive ;  but  this  is  not  one  of  them.  The  great 
and  good  Coleridge  is  not  a  subject  for  shallow 
rebuke.  His  infirmities  affected  those  nearest 
to  him  in  an  indirect  negative  way,  however 
potently  ;  directly  and  aggressively  he  never  in- 
jured a  human  being,  save  himself.  He  was 
not  ambitious,  not  greedy  of  power,  and  thence 
he  was  not  touched  by  that  curse  to  so  many 
of  his  tribe,  envy  and  jealousy.  In  his  under- 
takings he  was  moved  by  aspiration  after  the 
true  and  good,  not  by  worldly  desires. 

Leaving  out  of  view  the  disabling  effects,  of 
opium,  it  may  be  doubted  whether  Coleridge 
had  enough  of  practical  talent  and  prudence,  of 
daily  provident  outlook,  to  supply  the  ever  re- 
current demands  of  a  family.  To  himself  this 
inability  was  a  source  of  anxiety,  depression, 
self-reproach.  On  the  margin  of  Lamb's  copy 
of  Dramatic  Scenes  by  Proctor,  at  the  end  of 
an  acute  and  generous  criticism  of  Proctor's 
verse,  he  makes  this  reflection  :  "  Oh  !  for  such 
a  man  worldly  prudence  is  transfigured  into 
the  highest  spiritual  duty  !  How  generous  is 
self-interest  in  him,  whose  true  self  is  all  that 
is  good  and  hopeful  in  all  ages,  as  far  as  the 
language  of  Spenser,  Shakespeare,  and  Milton 


90  COLERIDGE. 

shall  become  the  mother-tongue."     And  then 
he  adds  in  a  separate  paragraph  : 

"  A  map  of  the  road  to  Paradise,  drawn  in 
Purgatory,  on  the  confines  of  Hell,  by  S.  T.  C. 
July  30th,  1 8 19." 

Made  aware  by  these  startling  words  to  what 
a  depth  of  soul-suffering  so  great  a  being  may 
be  brought  by  his  own  acts,  we  can  only  heave 
a  sigh  of  sympathy  for  the  illustrious  victim, 
and  reflect  on  the  fallibility  of  man. 

Whoever  would  know  Coleridge  —  and  to 
know  him  well  is  something  like  a  privilege  — 
should  not  dwell  on  the  picture  drawn  by  De 
Quincey  when,  about  the  year  1807,  Coleridge 
was  living  at  the  Courier  ofifice,  often  "  strug- 
gling with  pain,  his  lips  baked  with  feverish 
heat  and  often  black  in  color,"  when,  in  short, 
his  great  soul  was  vexed  and  shadowed  by  the 
vices  of  the  body ;  but  should  take  in  the  im- 
age of  him  that  is  presented  by  Henry  Nelson 
Coleridge  in  the  Table  Talk  on  such  a  day  as 
the  24th  of  June,  1827,  when  he  "talked  a  vol- 
ume of  criticism  which,  printed  verbatim  as  he 
spoke  it,  would  make  the  reputation  of  any 
other  man  but  himself.  The  sun  was  setting 
behind  Caen  wood,  and  the  calm  of  the  even- 
ing was  sa  exceedingly  deep  that  it  arrested 


COLERIDGE.  9 1 

Mr.  Coleridge's  attention.  He  left  off  talking, 
ant!  fell  into  an  almost  trance-like  state  for  ten 
minutes,  whilst  contemplating  the  beautiful 
prospect  before  us.  His  eyes  swam  in  tears, 
his  head  inclined  a  little  forward,  and  there 
was  a  slight  uplifting  of  the  fingers,  which 
seemed  to  tell  me  he  was  in  prayer.  I  was 
awe-stricken,  and  remained  absorbed  in  look- 
ing at  the  man  in  forgetfulness  of  external 
nature,  when  he  recovered  himself  and  after  a 
word  or  two  fell  by  some  secret  link  of  associa- 
tion upon  Spenser's  poetry." 

The  Friend,  as  a  periodical  publication,  was 
a  failure  ;  and  Coleridge,  being  not  merely 
editor  but  publisher,  lost  money  by  it.  As 
issued  afterwards  in  three  volumes,  containing 
profound  disquisitions,  illustrated  and  enriched 
with  apt  and  various  knowledge,  TJie  Friend  is 
a  casket  full  of  precious  thoughts.  Take  this 
as  a  sample  (from  page  132  of  Marsh's  Amer- 
ican edition  of  183 1) :  "  The  understanding  of 
the  higher  brutes  has  only  organs  of  outward 
sense,  and  consequently  sees  material  objects 
only  ;  but  man's  understanding  has  moreover 
organs  of  inward  sense,  and  therefore  the 
power  of  acquainting  itself  with  invisible  real- 
ities or  spiritual  objects."    To  thoughtful  schol- 


92  COLERIDGE. 

ars  this  is  valuable ;  but  think  of  a  man  trying 
to  make  "the  pot  boil"  with  such  fuel.  Or 
read,  on  page  410,  a  long  passage  on  Nature, 
Idea,  Intuition,  and  Plato.  Truly  one  who 
sought  to  meet  daily  family  expenses  through 
the  means  of  such  material  was  infatuated 
with  high  philosophy  and  abstruse  thinking. 
There  are,  to  be  sure,  many  practical,  easily 
intelligible  sentences  and  pages,  like  this,  for 
example :  "  Like  arms  without  hearts  are  the 
widest  maxims  oi prii deuce  disjoined  from  those 
feelings  which  flow  forth  from  principle  as  from 
a  fountain."  The  writings  of  Coleridge  are 
ballasted  with  common  sense,  and  his  common 
sense  is  the  more  solid  because  strengthened 
by  the  ideal,  and  because  his  nature  was  large 
and  lofty  enough  to  furnish  sound  ideals  to 
draw  from. 

A  man's  life  is  multiplied,  enlarged,  enno- 
bled, by  interest  in  his  fellow-men,  by  devotion 
to  those  spiritual  and  intellectual  principles 
that  advance  and  uplift  mankind.  Thus  am- 
plified and  elevated  was  Coleridge.  The  high 
and  wide  range  of  his  intellect  and  his  sympa- 
thies is  exemplified  in  TJie  Friend,  the  first, 
chronologically,  of  his  prose  works.  In  this, 
as  in  those  that  follow  it,  we  have  everywhere 


COLERIDGE.  93 

a  clear,  strong,  brilliant  mind  disinterestedly 
in  earnest.  The  thought  is  vivid,  the  expres- 
sion apt.  He  never  deals  in  decorated  or  pol- 
ished commonplace.  In  the  writings  of  Cole- 
ridge, through  his  effective  intellectual  endow- 
ment, especially  through  his  sure  perception 
of  likeness,  the  associative  power  is  uncom- 
monly active,  and  thence  rare  vivacity  and  at- 
tractiveness are  imparted  to  his  printed  page. 
This,  too,  was  a  chief  source  of  his  fascinating 
speech,  thought  suggesting  thought  in  an  end- 
less series  of  concatenated  imaginations,  which 
his  poetic  sensibility  enfolded  in  its  radiance. 
And  of  his  pages  a  crowning  virtue  it  is  that 
they  all  tend  to  the  spiritualization  of  man. 

The  mind  of  Coleridge  was  so  copious  and 
fluent  that  upon  the  margins  of  volumes  he 
was  reading  it  overflowed  in  rapid,  pithy  com- 
ment, Charles  Lamb  liked  to  lend  him  books, 
they  came  back,  he  said,  so  enriched.  Many 
of  these  viarginalia  have  been  collected  into 
four  volumes  of  Litcrmy  Remains,  edited  by 
his  nephew,  Henry  Nelson  Coleridge.  These 
volumes  are  a  treasury  of  critical  judgments 
on  an  endless  variety  of  subjects,  literary, 
philosophical,  theological,  all  of  them  derived 
from    or   grounded    on   generative    principles. 


94  COLERIDGE. 

Whether  you  accept  them  or  not,  they  feed 
your  thought  with  suggestion  or  stimulation. 
In  them  is  the  pulse  of  thoughtful  life,  the 
gleam  of  genial  light.  The  most  valuable 
chapters  are  the  reports  of  lectures  on  Liter- 
ature and  Art  and  on  Shakespeare.  The  notes 
on  Shakespeare  are  a  lively  stream  of  sympa- 
thetic commentary,  flowing  from  heights  which 
stretch  into  the  infinite  and  invisible,  and  re- 
plenished, invigorated,  by  springs  that  rise  up 
from  the  practical  along  men's  daily  walks. 
These  springs  are  deeper  and  these  heights 
loftier  than  most  men  have  access  to,  and  so 
all  critics  and  commentators  on  Shakespeare, 
even  the  most  accomplished,  fail  not  to  look 
into  Coleridge  to  get  assurance  of  their  suc- 
cess as  interpreters  of  the  profoundest  of  poets. 

From  the  coincidence  between  certain  prin- 
ciples and  judgments  put  forth  by  Coleridge 
and  those  found  in  Schlegel's  lectures  on  Dra- 
matic Literature,  it  was  inferred  by  some, 
whose  wish  was  father  to  the  thought,  that 
Coleridge  had  borrowed  without  acknowledg- 
ment from  Schlegel.  In  the  following  valu- 
able letter,  written  in  1818,  Coleridge  disposes 
of  this  calumny  : 

"  My  next  Friday's  lecture  will,  if  I  do  not 


COLERIDGE.  95 

grossly  flatter-blind  myself,  be  interesting,  and 
the  points  of  view  not  only  original,  but  new 
to  the  audience.  I  make  this  distinction,  be- 
cause sixteen  or  rather  seventeen  years  ago  I 
delivered  eighteen  lectures  on  Shakespeare,  at 
the  Royal  Institution  ;  three  fourths  of  which 
appeared  at  that  time  startling  paradoxes,  al- 
though they  have  since  been  adopted  even  by 
men  who  then  made  use  of  them  as  proofs 
of  my  flighty  and  paradoxical  turn  of  mind  ; 
all  tending  to  prove  that  Shakespeare's  judg- 
ment was,  if  possible,  still  more  wonderful 
than  his  genius  ;  or  rather,  that  the  contra- 
distinction itself  between  judgment  and  genius 
rested  on  an  utterly  false  theory.  This  and 
its  proofs  and  grounds  have  been  —  I  should 
not  have  said  adopted,  but  produced  as  their 
own  legitimate  children  by  some,  and  by  oth- 
ers the  merit  of  them  attributed  to  a  foreign 
writer,  whose  lectures  were  not  given  orally 
till  two  years  after  mine,  rather  than  to  their 
countryman;  though  I  dare  appeal  to  the  most 
adequate  judges,  as  Sir  George  Beaumont,  the 
Bishop  of  Durham,  Mr.  Sotheby,  and  after- 
wards to  Mr.  Rogers  and  Lord  Byron,  whether 
there  is  one  single  principle  in  Schlegel's  work 
(which  is  not  an   admitted  drawback  from  its 


96  COLERIDGE. 

merits)  that  was  not  established  and  applied 
in  detail  by  me.  Plutarch  tells  us  that  ego- 
tism is  a  venial  fault  in  the  unfortunate,  and 
justifiable  in  the  calumniated,"  etc. 

In  another  letter,  written  in  1819,  he  thus 
recurs  to  this  subject:  "The  coincidence  be- 
tween my  lectures  and  those  of  Schlegel  was 
such  and  so  close  that  it  was  fortunate  for  rr^ 
moral  reputation  that  I  had  not  only  from  five 
to  seven  hundred  ear-witnesses  that  the  pas- 
sages had  been  given  by  me  at  the  Royal 
Institution  two  years  before  Schlegel  com- 
menced his  lectures  at  Vienna,  but  that  notes 
had  been  taken  of  these  by  several  ladies  and 
men  of  high  rank." 

More  even  than  most  men  of  genius  Cole- 
ridge was  a  target  for  the  shafts  of  envious 
or  ignorant  detraction,  embittered  in  England 
during  the  first  decades  of  the  present  century 
by  the  gall  of  party-politics.  Thus  Jeffrey,  in 
the  Edinburgh  Review,  called  Christabel  "  a 
mixture  of  raving  and  driveling."  Now,  nei- 
ther Jeffrey  nor  any  of  his  coadjutors,  however 
great  their  merits  (and  their  merits  were  great, 
for  the  permanent  breach  they  made  in  the 
Chinese  wall  of  old  abuses,  and  the  example 
they  set  of  bold  discussion),  not  one  of  them 


COLERIDGE.  97 

had  the  fineness  of  faculty  or  the  winged  rate 
and  quality  of  motion  required  to  reach  the 
poetic  atmosphere  where  such  a  genuinely 
new  poem* was  breathed  forth. 

Christahel  Coleridge  drew  out  of  his  spirit- 
uality, exalted  by  an  exquisite  poetic  aspira- 
tion. The  clever  company  of  early  Edinburgh 
Reviewers  were  not  a  spiritually-minded  set  : 
the  good  work  they  had  to  do  required  grosser 
material  and  coarser  tools  than  those  with 
which  Christabels  are  conceived  and  con- 
structed. Jeffrey,  their  chief  critic  of  verse, 
could  appreciate  Scott,  but  not  Wordsworth 
and  Coleridge.  Towards  them,  from  spiritual 
and  poetic  deficiencies,  he  was  unjust,  and 
from  self-complacency  he  gave  impertinent  ut- 
terance to  his  injustice,  himself  hardly  aware 
that  he  was  impertinent.  Among  critics  and 
would-be  critics  Jeffrey  will  always  have  fol- 
lowers as  self-sufficient  as  he  was,  cultivated 
but  not  poetically-minded  men  who  have  more 
ambition  than  insight,  much  more  self-admi- 
ration than  modesty.  And  the  shallowest  of 
this  class  will  deal  in  the  easy,  graceless 
method  of  scoff,  just  as  by  the  Edinburgh  Re- 
viewers was  fastened  upon  the  three  poet- 
friends,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  Southey, 
7 


98  COLERIDGE. 

the  preposterous  misnomer  the  Lake  School. 
You  will  hear  it  now  and  then  applied  to  them 
at  this  late  day,  so  pertinaciously  will  a  nick- 
name stick.  The  three  differed  in  t]jeir  poetic 
principles  as  well  as  practice,  and  agreed  only 
in  one  thing,  says  Mr,  Shairp,  "  their  opposi- 
tion to  the  hard  and  unimaginative  spirit 
which  was  then  the  leading  characteristic  of 
i\iQ  Edinburgh  Reinezv^ 

Political  rancor,  in  stormy  times,  sprinkled 
wormwood  in  the  ink  of  whig  critics  when 
writing  of  these  three,  especially  Coleridge, 
who  was  acknowledged  to  be  a  powerful  polit- 
ical writer ;  but  he  was  a  political  writer  who 
wrote  like  a  philosopher,  not  like  a  partisan. 
In  1800  Coleridge  was  with  Fox  in  opposing 
the  war  with  France,  but  when  he  sagacious- 
ly discerned,  as  Bonaparte  unfolded  himself, 
that  he  was  an  unscrupulous,  grasping  despot, 
he  separated  himself  from  the  eloquent  whig 
leader.  The  self-justification  of  Coleridge  for 
going  over  to  the  tory  side  is  complete.  He 
passed  over  to  the  tories,  he  says,  "  only  in 
the  sense  in  which  all  patriots  did  so  at  that 
time,  by  refusing  to  accompany  the  whigs 
in  their  almost  perfidious  demeanor  towards 
Napoleon.     Anti-ministerial  they  styled  their 


COLERIDGE.  99 

policy,  but  it  was  really  anti-national.  It  was 
exclusively  in  relation  to  the  great  feud  with 
Napoleon  that  I  adhered  to  the  tories.  But 
because  this  feud  was  so  capital,  so  earth-shak- 
ing, that  it  occupied  all  hearts,  and  all  the 
councils  of  Europe,  suffering  no  other  ques- 
tion almost  to  live  in  the  neighborhood,  hence 
it  happened  that  he  who  joined  the  tories  in 
this  was  regarded  as  their  ally  in  everything. 
Domestic  politics  were  then  in  fact  forgotten." 
In  more  ways  than  one  Coleridge  suffered 
for  his  unworldliness.  The  world  loves  world- 
lings :  it  erects  statues  to  ambitious  public 
self-seekers.  To  the  world  an  idealist  is  hate- 
ful, partly  because  it  cannot  understand  him, 
but  chiefly  because  he  is  a  reproach  to  its 
grossness  and  stolidity.  The  world  is  busy 
with  petty  interests ;  Coleridge  dealt  in  large 
principles.  He  was  ever  looking  beyond  the 
present,  either  backward  or  forward.  He  had 
no  aptness  for  superficiality :  the  world's  work 
is,  most  of  it,  necessarily  on  the  surface. 
Coleridge  was  a  meditater,  not  an  actor.  He 
was,  to  be  sure,  an  exquisite  artist  as  well  as  a 
deep  thinker  ;  but  his  artist-work  was  too  deli- 
cate for  the  daily  market.  By  the  originality 
of  his  genius  he  opened  a  road  which  enabled 


lOO  COLERIDGE. 

Scott  and  Byron  to  cultivate  the  more  pros- 
perously their  fields.*  Them  the  immediate 
public  rewarded  with  guineas  by  the  thou- 
sands ;  him  it  left  to  starve. 

Coleridge  was  always  pecuniarily  pinched, 
and  those  who  love  and  admire  him  are  pained 
when  they  think  what  extremities  of  indigence 
he  might  have  suffered  but  for  the  annuity  of 
the  generous  Wedgwoods.  Towards  the  lat- 
ter end  of  his  life  he  enjoyed  a  pension  from 
the  Crown,  but  of  .this,  during  his  very  last 
years,  when  from  grievous  sickness  he  needed 
it  most,  he  was  deprived,  through  the  mean- 
ness of  some  cruel  adviser  of  the  new  King, 
William  IV. 


VI. 

In  literature  poetry  is  supreme,  aiming  to 
reach  the  quintessence  of  being,  to  make  per- 
ceptible the  very  aroma  of  thought  and  life. 
And,  as  to  divulge  and  present  the  essential 
nature  of  men  and  things  is  the  purpose  of  all 
high  literature,  in  its  every  department  should 
be  active  that  creative  power  which  at  its  flood 
swells  into  poetry.  The  orator,  the  historian, 
the  critic,  the  philosopher,  the  essayist,  each 
fails  to  swing  up  to  the  height  of  his  theme,  to 
outfill  the  capability  of  his  subject,  unless  his 
pulse  be  enlivened  by  draughts  of  the  same 
breath  that  immortalizes  Hatnlet  and  Fmist. 
That  his  work  be  not  tamg  and  unprofitable  it 
must  be  illuminated  by  light  from  the  beauti- 
ful. From  this  poetic  source  he  gets  a  clearer 
insight,  a  readier  mastery. 

Now  Coleridge  was  philosopher,  essayist, 
critic,  and,  in  his  social  monologues,  an  irresisti- 
ble orator.  And  these  diverse  fields,  through 
his  rare  competence  to  work  them,  had  for  him 
such  attraction  that  they  drew  him  from  a  full 


102  COLERIDGE. 

culture  of  the  most  fruitful  of  all  literary  fields, 
from  a  field  in  which  his  genius  proved  itself 
so  generative.  Or  was  it  that  his  vein  of  po- 
etry, genuine,  rich,  and  refined,  was  neither 
broad  nor  thick  ?  Or  was  the  ardor  wherewith 
every  poet  plies  his  gift  somewhat  damped  by 
outside  opinion  ?  Coleridge  was,  as  Words- 
worth said,  a  wonderful  man.  He  was  a  giant 
with  one  arm  paralyzed,  a  sun  with  deep  spots 
in  it  that  dimmed  its  radiance.  Possibly,  but 
for  the  crippling  contradictions  in  him,  but  for 
his  unmanning  weaknesses,  his  many-sided 
splendor  would  have  been  too  dazzling. 

What  a  curse  opium  was  to  him  no  one  knew 
so  well  as  himself.  Whoever  would  reproach 
Coleridge,  let  him  pause.  If  he  is  one  to  value 
what  was  great  and  good  in  this  eminent  man, 
his  reproaches  will  turn  into  tears  of  sympathy 
after  he  shall  have  tead  these  sentences  writ- 
ten by  Coleridge  to  his  friend  Wade  :  "  In  the 
one  crime  of  opium,  what  crimes  have  I  not 
made  myself  guilty  of  ?  Ingratitude  to  my 
Maker  ;  and  to  my  benefactors  injustice  ;  and 

unnatural    cruelty  to  my  poor  children 

After  my  death,  I  earnestly  entreat  that  a  full 
and  unqualified  narrative  of  my  wretchedness, 
and  its  guilty  cause,  may  be  made  public,  that 


COLERIDGE.  IO3 

at  least  some  little  good  may  be  effected  by 
the  direful  example." 

One  of  the  most  genuine,  ever  fresh  and  de- 
lightful, of  Coleridge's  poems  is  Youth  and 
As:e.  Written  before  he  had  entered  his  forti- 
eth  year,  it  is  a  plaint  that  youth  is  gone  and 
age  is  come  ;  but  it  is  not  at  all  a  wail,  it  is,  I 
should  say,  more  imaginative  than  personal,  I 
make  room  for  a  third  of  it : 

"  Flowers  are  lovely  ;  Love  is  flower-like  : 
Friendship  is  a  sheltering  tree  ; 
Oh  the  joys  that  came  down  shower-like. 
Of  Friendship,  Love,  and  Liberty, 

Ere  I  was  old  ! 
Ere  I  was  old  ?  Ah,  woeful  ere  ! 
Which  tells  me  Youth  's  no  longer  here  ! 

0  Youth  !  for  years  so  many  and  sweet, 
'T  is  known  that  you  and  I  were  one  ; 

1  '11  think  it  but  a  fond  deceit  — 
It  cannot  be  that  thou  art  gone  !  " 

Kindly,  tender,  affectionate,  not  despondent 
by  nature,  neither  restless  with  ambitious 
schemes,  nor  cast  down  by  ambition's  disap- 
pointments, with  immense  and  various  intel- 
lectual means,  Coleridge  had  it  in  him  to  be 
happy,  cheerful,  and  successful.  But,  like 
many  others,  and  in  a  greater  degree  than  most, 
he  was   a   joint  victim  of  circumstances  and 


104  COLERIDGE. 

himself.  Men  of  mere  talent  are  much  less 
liable  to  be  injured  by  circumstances  than  men 
of  sensibility  and  genius,  especially  of  poetic 
genius.  The  world  is  a  prosaic  world.  In  its 
daily  doings  and  aspects  it  shows  little  of  the 
poetry  it  is  capable  of.  It  does  not  know,  or 
care,  how  to  cherish  and  help  men  of  creative 
mind.  Sometimes  it  fondles  and  spoils  them. 
Neither  in  his  childhood,  his  boyhood,  nor  his 
youth,  had  Coleridge  the  affectionate  further- 
ance, the  sentimental  support,  the  sympathetic 
guidance,  which  a  large  sensitive  nature  needs, 
if  it  is  to  be  unfolded  adequately  to  its  endow- 
ments and  capabilities.  Great  men  make  cir- 
cumstances ;  but  boys  and  youths  who  are  to 
become  great  men  are,  on  account  of  that  very 
latent  power  and  in  proportion  to  its  strength, 
exposed  to  be  diverted  and  partially  thwarted 
by  meagre  or  perverse  circumstances. 

Coleridge  was  not  a  man  of  worldly  ambi- 
tions ;  he  was  a  man  of  intellectual  and  spir- 
itual aspirations.  Nevertheless,  like  other 
gifted  natures,  he  had  his  lower  moods,  his 
moments  of  downward  solicitation.  In  the  re- 
bound from  one  of  these  he  probably  penned 
the  well-known  lines  called  Complaint  and 
Reply.     These  lines  are   a  perpetual  rebuke, 


COLERIDGE.  I05 

warning,  and  encouragement  to  genuine  men 
of  letters  : 

"  How  seldom,  friend  !  a  good  great  man  inherits 
Honor  or  wealth,  with  all  his  worth  and  pains  ! 
It  sounds  like  stories  from  the  land  of  spirits, 
If  any  man  obtain  that  which  he  merits, 
Or  any  merit  that  which  he  obtains. 
For  shame,  dear  friend  !  renounce  this  canting  strain ! 
What  wouldst  thou  have  a  good  great  man  obtain  ?  ' 

Place  —  titles  —  salary  —  a  gilded  chain  — 
Or  throne  of  corses  which  his  sword  hath  slain  ? 
Greatness  and  goodness  are  not  means,  but  ends  ! 
Hath  he  not  always  treasures,  always  friends. 
The  good  great  man  ?  —  three  treasures,  love,  and  light, 
And  calm  thoughts,  regular  as  infant's  breath  ; 
And  three  firm  friends,  more  sure  than  day  and  night  — 
Himself,  his  Maker,  and  the  angel  Death." 

Ktibla  KJian,  The  Ancient  Mariner,  and 
CJiristabel  —  new  beings  begotten  on  the 
brain  of  genius  —  are  fragrant  with  subtle 
meanings,  penetrated  by  refined  flames  that 
impart  to  every  limb  poetic  life,  and  hang 
around  the  whole  an  unquenchable  luminous- 
ness.  The  poems  he  wrote  in  middle  life  have 
more  substance  and  a  more  direct  bearing  on 
daily  human  affairs.  If  less  ethereal  than 
these  famous  three,  they  are  not  less  spiritual. 
The  controlling,  the  generative  power  of  the 
soul    is   an   ever-present   thought   with    Cole- 


I06  COLERIDGE. 

ridge.     Of  this   the   following  lines  from  the 
ode  on  Dejection  is  a  happy  illustration  : 

"  And  would  we  aught  behold  of  higher  worth, 
Than  that  inanimate  cold  world  allowed 
■  To  the  poor,  loveless,  ever  anxious  crowd, 

Ah  !  from  the  soul  itself  must  issue  forth 
A  light,  a  glory,  a  fair  luminous  cloud 

Enveloping  the  earth  — 
And  from  the  soul  itself  must  there  be  sent 

A  sweet  and  potent  voice,  of  its  own  birth, 
Of  all  sweet  sounds  the  life  and  element !  " 

The  fidelity  of  Coleridge's  intuitions  to  the 
divinest  demands  of  human  nature,  and  the 
prolific  union  in  him  of  moral  and  poetical 
sensibility,  are  nowhere  more  distinctly  pre- 
sented than  in  his  poem  entitled  Love,  Hope, 
and  Patience  in  Education  : 

"  O'er  wayward  childhood  wouldst  thou  hold  firm  rule. 
And  sun  thee  in  the  light  of  happy  faces ; 
Love,  Hope,  and  Patience,  these  must  be  thy  graces. 
And  in  thine  own  heart  let  them  first  keep  school. 
For  as  old  Atlas  on  his  broad  neck  places 
Heaven's  starry  globe,  and  there  sustains  it,  —  so 
Do  these  upbear  the  little  world  below 
Of  education,  —  Patience,  Love,  and  Hope. 
Methinks,  I  see  them  grouped,  in  seemly  show, 
The  straightened  arms  upraised,  the  palms  aslope, 
And  robes  that,  touching  as  adown  they  flow. 
Distinctly  blend,  like  snow  embossed  in  snow- 
Oh,  part  them  never  !  If  Hope  prostrate  lie, 
Love  too  will  sink  and  die. 


4 


COLERIDGE.  lO^ 

But  Love  is  subtle,  and  cloth  proof  derive 

From  her  own  life  that  Hope  is  yet  alive  ; 

And  bending  o'er  with  soul-transfusing  eyes. 

And  the  soft  murmurs  of  the  mother  Love, 

Woos  back  the  fleeting  spirit  and  half-supplies  ; 

Thus  Love  repays  to  Hope  what  Hope  first  gave  to  Love, 

Yet  haply  there  will  come  a  weary  day, 

When,  overtasked,  at  length 
Both  Love  and  Hope  beneath  the  load  give  way. 
Then  with  a  statue's  smile,  a  statue's  strength, 
Stands  the  mute  sister,  Patience,  nothing  loth, 
And  both  supporting  does  the  work  of  both." 

An  able  critic  in  the  London  Quarterly  Re- 
viezv  for  July,  1863,  in  an  article  on  "Cole- 
ridge as  a  Poet,"  commenting  on  this  poem, 
asks :  "  Can  any  other  poem  of  this  century 
be  cited  in  which,  within  so  small  a  compass, 
there  is  so  wide  a  range  ?  " 

The  tragedy  of  Remorse,  written  in  his  first 
period,  was  accepted  at  Drury  Lane  Theatre  in 
1813,  partly  owing  to  the  good  offices  of  Lord 
Byron,  at  that  time  one  of  the  directors  of 
Drury  Lane.  Remorse  had  a  run  of  twenty 
nights.  This  success  encouraged  Coleridge  to 
write,  and  offer  to  Drury  Lane,  another  trag- 
edy, Zapolya,  which  was  rejected.  The  best 
and  brightest  of  Coleridge  is  not  in  his  dramas. 
The  acceptance  and  preparation  of  Remorse 
brought   him   into   persojial    intercourse  with 


I08  COLERIDGE. 

Byron,  of  whose  countenance  he  gives  this 
vivid  portraiture  :  "  If  you  had  seen  Lord 
Byron  you  could  scarcely  disbelieve  him.  So 
beautiful  a  countenance  I  scarcely  ever  saw  ; 
his  teeth  so  many  stationary  smiles  ;  his  eyes 
the  open  portals  of  the  sun  —  things  of  light, 
and  made  for  light ;  and  his  forehead,  so  am- 
ple, and  yet  so  flexible,  passing  from  marble 
smoothness  into  a  hundred  wreaths  and  lines 
and  dimples,  correspondent  to  the  feelings  and 
sentiments  he  is  uttering." 

In  1816,  after  desperate  but  ineffectual 
struggles  against  the  tyranny  of  opium,  he 
voluntarily  put  himself  under  the  control  of 
Dr.  Oilman,  of  Highgate,  and  took  up  his 
abode  with  him.  Dr.  and  Mrs.  Gilman  proved 
to  be  kind,  appreciative  friends.  Through 
their  tender,  watchful  care  the  curse  of  opium 
was  lifted  from  his  soul.  Beneath  their  roof 
he  lived  for  eighteen  years,  until  his  death. 

The  mind  of  Coleridge  was  multifold.  It 
had  pinions,  and  it  was  armed  with  blades ;  it 
could  soar,  and  it  could  delve  ;  it  was  poetical 
and  philosophical,  it  was  critical  and  creative. 
It  was  moved  to  embody  the  beautiful  and  to 
penetrate  the  abstruse.  During  his  latter 
years  he  strove  to  dig  deeper  into  the  mines 


COLERIDGE.  IO9 

of  metaphysics  and  theology,  whose  subtle 
problems  he  had  sought  to  solve  in  his  younger 
years. 

The  first  direction  given,  even  to  a  mind  of 
largest  mold,  is  sometimes  due  to  what  is  called 
chance.  Hartley  had  been  a  member  of  Jesus 
College,  Cambridge,  where  Coleridge  had 
rooms,  and  the  upper  atmosphere  of  Cam- 
bridge was  imbued  with  his  philosophy,  whose 
principles,  being  derived  from  Locke,  were 
materialistic.  With  these  principles  Coleridge, 
became  infected  so  strongly  that  he  named 
his  first-born  son  Hartley.  But  no  mind  of 
full  rich  endowment  can  finally  rest  in  phil- 
osophical doctrines  so  insufficient  ;  and  so 
Coleridge,  before  he  went  to  Germany,  was, 
by  the  movement  of  his  own  higher  mental 
wants,  drawn  upward  towards  a  wider,  cleaner 
track.  His  consciousness  prompted  him  to 
infer  that  man  were  an  abject  creature,  a  mere 
earthling,  if  only  through  the  senses  and  ex- 
perience he  got  all  his  knowledge.  He  felt 
that  within  the  mind  itself  there  must  be  an 
originating  life.  The  Transcendental  philos- 
ophy confirmed  this  consciousness,  demon- 
strating the  existence  of  a  priori  conceptions 
independent  of  experience.     If  Kant  did  not 


no  COLERIDGE. 

absolutely  reveal  to  Coleridge  a  new  domain  in 
the  realm  of  mind,  he  laid  bare  the  divisions 
of  that  realm  with  so  much  comparative  clear- 
ness, that  with  his  support  and  that  of  Schel- 
ling  Coleridge  gave  his  thought  freer  play  in 
the  region  of  metaphysics  and  speculative 
philosophy. 

In  a  note  to  the  concluding  chapter  of 
the  BiograpJiia  Literaria,  Coleridge  exclaims  : 
"  Poor  unlucky  Metaphysics  !  and  what  are 
they?  A  single  sentence  expresses  the  object 
and  thereby  the  contents  of  this  science  : 
KNOW  THYSELF.  And  SO  shalt  thou  know  God, 
so  far  as  is  permitted  to  a  creature,  and  in 
God  all  things.  Surely,  there  is  a  strange, 
nay,  rather  a  too  natural,  aversion  in  many  to 
know  themselves." 

Was  there  ever  penned  deeper,  greater, 
wiser  sentences  than  these  .-'  In  a  few  lines 
what  insight,  what  concentrated  truth !  To 
know  thyself  were  to  hold  in  thy  hand  a  key 
to  that  richest  and  most  roomy  of  palaces,  the 
mental  constitution  of  man,  and  thereby  have 
a  clew  to  all  that  is  within  the  ken  of  the 
human  mind.  We  should  be  walking  firmly, 
with  sure  hope,  on  the  road  to  the  solution  of 
deepest  problems,  of    those    inclosed   in  met- 


COLERIDGE.  1 1 1 

aphysics,  in  theology,  in  politics,  in  philosophy, 
in  aesthetics.  Thus  armed,  Coleridge  could 
have  cut  his  way  through  what  he  calls  "the 
holy  jungle  of  transcendental  metaphysics." 

But,  like  most  other  metaphysical  thinkers, 
he  took  such  delight  in  his  own  subjective 
mental  activities  that  he  could  not  gather  up 
his  intellectual  forces  for  an  unbiassed  delib- 
eration upon  certain  startling  objective  phe- 
nomena then  lately  laid  bare,  and  thus  seize 
their  immense  significance. 

That  there  is  a  close  connection  between 
brain  and  mind,  especially  intellectual  mind, 
has  always  been  vaguely  acknowledged,  or, 
rather,  indistinctly  felt.  Toward  the  end  of 
the  last  century.  Dr.  Gall,  a  physician  of  Vi- 
enna, proved,  by  a  thoroughly  Baconian  method, 
not  only  that  there  is  a  connection,  close  and 
indissoluble,  between  them,  but  that  the  brain 
is  the  indispensable  organ  of  every  kind  of 
mental  power  ;  and  further,  that,  instead  of 
being  one  single  organ,  it  is  a  congeries  of  or- 
gans, and  that  every  intellectual  aptitude,  every 
animal  propensity,  every  aspiration,  every  sen- 
timental movement,  has  in  the  brain  its  individ- 
ual instrument.  What  a  helpful  auxiliary  was 
here  offered  to  the  metaphysician,  to  the  psy- 


112  COLERIDGE. 

chologist,  to  the  theologian,  to  the  moralist ! 
Kant's  rare  intuition  would  have  caused  new 
delight  in  Coleridge,  who,  by  means  of  this 
new  potent  objective  discovery  of  Gall,  could 
have  given  precision,  enlargement,  definite- 
ness,  depth,  to  the  subjective  conclusions  of 
Kant  and  of  himself. 

Through  the  various  and  urgent  activity  of 
his  splendid  brain,  Coleridge  had  also  given  in 
to  theological  speculation.  A  Unitarian  in  his 
young  manhood,  he  had  in  middle  life  plumped 
out  into  a  high  churchman.  But  he  was  too 
independent  a  thinker,  and  too  much  of  a 
thinker,  for  any  body  of  priests.  In  her  Intro- 
duction to  the  Biographia  Litcraria,  —  an  In- 
troduction worthy  of  her  great  father,  —  his 
daughter  says  :  "  My  Father's  affectionate  re- 
spect for  Luther  is  enough  to  alienate  from  him 
the  High  Anglican  party,  and  his  admiration 
of  Kant  enough  to  bring  him  into  suspicion 
with  the  anti-philosophic  part  of  the  religious 
world,  —  which  is  the  whole  of  it,  except  a 
very  small  portion  indeed."  And  here,  from 
Aids  to  Reflection,  is  an  aphorism  too  pro- 
foundly true  and  verifiable  to  be  grateful  to 
sectarians  :  "  He  who  begins  by  loving  Chris- 
tianity better  than    truth,  proceeds  by  loving 


COLERIDGE.  1 1 3 

his  own  sect  or  church  better  than  Christian- 
ity, and  ends  in  loving  himself  better  than 
all." 

Through  Spurzheim,  a  pupil  of  Gall,  who  was 
in  London  about  the  year  1826,  Coleridge  got 
a  glimpse  of  the  gfeat  discovery.  But  whether 
from  being  too  old  (most  people  are,  after 
forty,  to  accept  a  large,  new,  revolutionary 
truth),  or  whether,  though  having  an  intellect 
apt  for  philosophic  search,  he  yet  lacked  the 
warm  hospitality  to  new  truths,  what  may  be 
called  the  philosophic  temperament,  which  not 
many  even  capacious  minds  are  blessed  with, 
or  whether  he  was  not  just  then  in  the  mood 
for  such  study,  —  whatever  the  cause,  while 
he  admitted  to  his  nephew  (see  Table  Talk) 
that  "  all  the  coincidences  which  have  been 
observed  could  scarcely  be  by  accident,"  the 
presentation  of  the  new  phenomena  did  not 
flash  into  his  mind  the  light  of  a  new  pro- 
lific principle,  as  the  fall  of  an  apple  did  into 
that  of  Newton.  Had  he  seized  the  import 
of  these  phenomena,  by  following  the  high 
logic  of  their  revelations,  both  his  philosophy 
and  his  theology  would  have  been  expanded, 
clarified. 

The  division  made  by  Kant  of  mental  fac- 
8 


114  COLERIDGE. 

iiltics  under  the  two  heads  of  Vevnunft  and 
Verstand  (Reason  and  Understanding),  — a 
division  which  involves  the  transcendental 
principles,  —  he  would  have  discovered  to  be 
incomplete  and  even  crude,  however  firmly 
grounded  in  truth,  and  however  admirable  as 
an  intuition.  On  the  wings  of  his  fine  sensi- 
bility, guided  now  by  this  new,  infallible  com- 
pass, mounting  into  the  hallowed  infinitudes 
of  human  spirituality,  he  would  have  discov- 
ered how  deeply  and  solidly  are  laid  in  the 
constitution  of  man  the  saving,  elevating  prin- 
ciples of  hopefulness,  justice,  love,  disinterest- 
edness, and  of  reverence,  "  that  angel  of  the 
world,"  as  Shakespeare  calls  it. 

The  consciousness  of  Coleridge,  his  deep 
spiritual  inwardness,  would  have  made  easy 
for  him  the  acceptance  of  the  commanding 
position,  impregnably  fortified  by  these  new 
phenomena,  that,  innate  in  man,  are  loftiest 
spiritual  and  moral  capabilities.  But  as  he  did 
not  look  i)ito  the  phenomena,  only  at  them  half 
playfully,  the  theological  fruit  of  his  conscious- 
ness remained  what  it  had  always  been,  mere 
notions,  what  himself  declares  the  luiica  sub- 
stantia oi  Spinosa  to  be,  "  di  subject  of  the  mind 
and  no  object  at  all."     What  lay  at  the  foun- 


COLERIDGE.  I  I  5 

dation-stone  of  his  theology  was  not  only  a  sub- 
ject  of  the  mind,  a  subjectivity,  it  was  a  foreign 
fiction,  an  adopted  imagination,  for  the  garden 
of  Eden  and  man's  fall  and  consequent  expul- 
sion from  the  garden  are  Hebrew  mythology, 
and  a  mythology  which  does  not  imply  a  very 
elevated  conception  of  divine  rule  and  methods. 

Modern  theology,  issuing  out  of  the  brains 
of  mediaeval  ascetics  and  scholastic  dreamers, 
has  adopted  the  fall  as  its  fundamental  belief, 
all  Christian  denominations  agreeing  to  make 
it  the  kernel,  the  soul,  of  their  various  creeds. 
Being  a  mere  notion,  a  subject  of  the  mind,  a 
subject  concreted  into  a  fable,  an  imaginative 
representation,  it  cannot  be  a  perennial  source 
of  binding  law,  but  was  from  the  first  doomed 
to  pass  away,  and  is  just  now  fast  losing  its 
factitious  authority.  Love  Mercy,  Do  Jus- 
tice, Walk  Humbly,  being  substantial  reali- 
ties in  the  depths  of  man's  nature,  objective 
truths,  "not  mere  subjects  of  the  mind,  being 
sovereign  principles  in  Deity  and  in  Humanity, 
can  never  pass  away.  Astrology  is  notional, 
subjective.  Astronomy  is  objective  :  theologies 
are  subjective,  transitory,  religious  and  moral 
principles  are  objective,  eternal. 

Had  Coleridsre  taken  the  hint  offered  to  him 


116  COLERIDGE. 

by  a  pupil  of  Gall,  a  hint  almost  more  pregnant 
even  than  that  given  to  Newton  in  the  fall  of 
an  apple,  he  would  have  got  to  know  —  not 
through  his  consciousness  merely  to  believe  — 
that  spiritual  disinterested  impulses  are  objec- 
tive principles,  inborn  in  human  nature.  Be- 
lief and  truth  may  be  as  far  asunder  as  nadir 
and  zenith.  When  coincident  with  truth  be- 
lief is  elevating,  when  not  it  is  lowering.  Be- 
lief is  often  the  child  of  ignorance  and  egotism, 
as  is  the  heathen  belief  in  fetishes  and  the 
Christian  belief  in  relics,  and  in  arbitrary  dog- 
mas, which  are  spiritual  relics.  Infinitely 
easier  is  it  to  believe  than  to  know.  A  faith 
may  be  false,  but  nothing  is  so  religious  as 
truth. 

Coleridge,  with  his  philosophic  faculty,  would 
have  been  among  the  first  to  acknowledge  the 
unsoundness  of  making  imaginations  the  basis 
of  religious  beliefs  ;  but  the  "  Fall  of  Man  " 
and  all  its  theosophic  corollaries  are  so  im- 
bedded in  the  modern  mind,  so  interwoven 
with  the  aspirations  and  spiritual  yearnings  of 
many  noble  and  highly  endowed  men,  that  the 
dogmatic,  mechanical,  non-vital  elements  of 
belief  usurp  upon  the  dynamic  and  vital,  and 
thus  lead  towards  cxclusiveness,  intolerance, 
Pharisaism. 


COLERIDGE.  WJ 

But  Coleridge  was  by  nature  too  large  and 
liberal  to  become  the  victim  of  any  Calvinistic 
hardness  and  narrowess.  Through  his  ecclesi- 
asticism  shone  the  genuine  Christian ;  and  the 
genuine  Christian  is  he  who,  convinced  of  the 
primordial  inherence  in  man  of  certain  un- 
selfish, spiritual,  moral  feelings,  and  of  their 
rightful  supremacy  in  life,  aims  and  strives  to 
make  these  feelings,  and  the  principles  they 
father,  rule  in  his  conduct.  He  need  not,  in- 
deed, take  cognizance  of  them  theoretically,  if 
he  proves  that  he  walks  daily  in  their  sun- 
shine, by  being  just,  merciful,  hopeful,  hum- 
ble. 

Thence  it  is  that  the  pages  of  Coleridge 
have  more  life  and  light  in  them  than  those  of 
most  writers.  While  he  was  both  a  thinker 
and  a  poet,  he  had  besides,  springing  out  of 
his  consciousness,  a  generous  conception  of  the 
capabilities  of  human  nature.  And  this  con- 
ception gives  warmth  and  depth  and  truth  to 
his  delineations  and  reflections. 

From  the  printed  pages  of  Coleridge,  rich, 
various,  and  original  as  they  are,  we  do  not 
get  a  full  image  of  his  mental  stature.  He 
had  a  marvelous,  a  unique,  gift  of  speech. 
He  was  a  sovereign  talker,  sovereign  through 


Il8  COLERIDGE. 

the  range,  elevation,  luminousness,  fluency  of 
his  talk.  All  through  his  manhood,  even  from 
the  days  when  at  Cambridge  he  drew  a  choice 
circle  around  him,  he  instructed,  he  stimulated, 
he  awakened  men's  minds  by  his  affluent, 
ready,  expressive  discourse.  Nay,  we  have 
seen  that  strangers,  visiting  Christ's  Hospital, 
were  arrested  to  listen  to  the  eloquent  outgiv- 
ings of  the  charity-boy. 

In  early  manhood  Wordsworth,  his  equal  as 
poet  and  thinker,  and  his  senior  by  two  years, 
was  his  pupil,  the  two  friends  being  to  each 
other  both  teacher  and  scholar.  De  Ouincey 
had  the  good  fortune  to  come  in  contact  with 
Coleridge,  or,  rather,  had  the  early  discern- 
ment to  seek  him,  in  his  own  budding  man- 
hood, and  had  his  literary  and  philosophic  fac- 
ulties expanded,  encouraged,  and  emboldened, 
his  powers  all  quickened,  by  converse  with  one 
whose  mental  gifts  he  continued  through  life 
to  regard  with  unabated  admiration. 

But  it  was  in  the  last  quarter  of  his  life, 
particularly  in  its  last  decade,  that  Coleridge 
was  sought  for  the  eloquence  and  wisdom  of 
his  speech,  and  that  the  parlors  of  Dr.  and 
Mrs.  Oilman  at  Highgate  were  resorted  to  by 
many  eager,  admiring  listeners,   among  them 


COLERIDGE.  I  1 9 

some  of  the  master-spirits  of  the  age,  in  whose 
susceptive  brains  he  sowed  ideas  that  are  still 
coming  up  laden  with  nutritious  thought. 
Among  these  were  Arnold  of  Rugby,  who  said 
that  Coleridge  was  the  greatest  intellect  that 
England  had  produced  within  his  memory  ; 
and  Julius  Hare,  and  J.  H.  Newman,  and  Mau- 
rice, and  Hazlitt,  who  was  called  a  brain-sucker 
of  Coleridge  and  Carlyle. 

Carlyle,  in  a  chapter  on  Coleridge  in  the 
Life  of  Sterling,  describes  him  "  as  a  kind  of 
Magiis,  girt  in  mystery  and  enigma ;  his  Dodona 
oak-grove  (Mr.  Oilman's  house  at  Highgate) 
whispering  strange  things,  uncertain  whether 
oracles  or  jargon."  At  the  same  time,  almost 
in  the  same  sentence,  he  calls  Coleridge  "A 
sublime  man  ;  who,  alone  in  those  dark  days, 
had  saved  his  crown  of  spiritual  manhood,  es- 
caping from  the  black  materialisms  and  revo- 
lutionary deluges  with  '  God,  Freedom,  Im- 
mortality' still  his  :  a  King  of  men.".  To  one 
who  would  have  a  view  of  Coleridge  in  his  lat- 
ter years,  when  he  talked  so  wonderfully  at 
Highgate,  indispensable  is  this  chapter,  exe- 
cuted in  Carlyle's  most  vivid  strain,  at  once 
picturesque  and  penetrating,  broad  and  keen, 
touched,    though    it   be,    with    that    grudging 


1 20  COLERIDGE. 

jealous  spirit  toward  eminent  contemporaries 
which  is  a  blot  on  Mr.  Carlyle's  brilliant  page. 
Of  the  soundness  of  Coleridge's  critical  and 
ethical  judgments,  of  his  range  of  knowledge 
and  fertility  of  resources  as  exhibited  in  con- 
versation, we  have  convincing  evidence  in  the 
volume  of  Table  Talk.  And  rich  as  those  pages 
are,  they  are  but  a  partial  expression  of  what 
fell  from  Coleridge  in  the  converse  of  a  dozen 
years  between  him  and  his  nephew  and  son-in- 
law,  Henry  Nelson  Coleridge.  The  admiring, 
but  not  unduly  partial,  reporter  concludes  his 
preface  with  these  cordial,  honest  words  : 
"  Coleridge  himself,  —  blessings  on  his  gentle 
memory  !  —  Coleridge  was  a  frail  mortal.  He 
had,  indeed,  his  peculiar  weaknesses  as  well 
as  his  unique  powers ;  sensibilities  that  an 
averted  look  would  rack,  a  heart  that  would 
have  beaten  calmly  in  the  tremblings  of  an 
earthquake.  He  shrank  from  mere  uneasiness 
like  a  child,  and  bore  the  preparatory  agonies 
of  his  death-attack  like  a  martyr.  Sinned 
against  a  thousand  times  more  than  sinning, 
he  himself  suffered  an  almost  life-long  punish- 
ment for  his  errors,  whilst  the  world  at  large 
h^s  the  unwithering  fruit  of  his  labors,  his 
genius,  and  his  sacrifice." 


COLERIDGE.  121 

In  a  thoughtful  vokniic,  published  ten  years 
ago,  entitled  Notivclles  Etudes  Morales  stir  le 
Temps  Present,  M.  Caro,  in  a  paper  on  Heine, 
quotes  approvingly  from  the  witty  German  the 
following  passage  on  Schelling  :  "  Schelling  is 
one  of  those  beings  whom  nature  has  endowed 
with  more  taste  for  poetry  than  poetic  faculty, 
and  who,  incapable  of  satisfying  the  Muses, 
betake  them  to  the  forests  of  philosophy, 
where  they  contract  with  abstract  Hamadriads 
liaisons  that  are  utterly  unproductive."  A 
keener  stroke  of  satirical  wit  it  were  hard  to 
find  ;  but  that  M.  Caro  is  justified  in  his  full 
approval  of  it  as  aimed  at  Schelling  may  be 
doubted,  seeing  the  large  place  filled  by  Schel- 
ling in  the  annals  of  German  philosophy. 
Coleridge,  too,  had  penetrated  into  the  forests 
of  philosophy  and  got  entangled  in  the  "jungle 
of  metaphysics,"  but,  being  at  the  same  time 
a  genuine  poet,  this  satire  is  inapplicable  to 
him. 

Philosophy  itself,  whatever  may  be  the  short- 
comings of  philosophers,  is  a  genuine  and  a 
great  thing,  its  aim  being  to  reach  first  prin- 
ciples in  all  subjects,  to  get  down  to  and  up 
to  primordial  elements,  controlling  causes.  He 
who  would  master  philosophy  must  descend 


122  COLERIDGE. 

into  the  deepest  deeps,  mount  to  the  highest 
heights,  grasp  with  his  thought  the  principles 
which  rule  all  science  and  all  art  and  all  prac- 
tice. Philosophers,  lovers  and  seekers  of  this 
highest  wisdom,  have  failed  to  compass  their 
object  partly  from  want  in  themselves  of  com- 
plete mental  endowment,  partly  from  want  of 
outward  material  in  the  yet  imperfectly  un- 
folded human  knowledge.  Kant  was  too  pre- 
dominantly intellectual,  lacking  in  full  measure 
the  spiritual  religious  faculties.  Coleridge, 
with  a  grand  intellect,  was  probably  too  sen- 
timental, and  thence  set  too  much  value  on 
ecclesiasticism.  Socrates  and  Plato,  whatever 
may  have  been  their  inborn  faculty,  certainly 
wanted  material,  verified  data. 

That  Coleridge  had  a  philosophic  mind,  that^ 
is,  a  mind  that  sought  and  could  reach  first 
principles,  is  apparent  in  every  chapter  of  his 
prose  volumes.  His  large  discourse  of  reason, 
his  emotional  sensibilities,  his  sense  of  the 
beautiful,  give  to  his  pages  that  unfading  life 
which  is  sustained  by  constant  reference  to 
the  most  comprehensive  and  vital  truths. 

When,  on  the  25th  of  July,  1834,  Coleridge 
passed  away  from  the  earth,  in  his  sixty-third 
year,  there  was  in  the  minds  of  the  multitude 


COLERIDGE.  1 23 

little  reverberation  of  the  solemn  toll  that 
announced  his  decease.  His  name  had  never 
been  lifted  and  flattered  by  the  breath  of 
popularity.  The  funeral  bell  had  a  much 
livelier  and  wider  echo  at  the  decease  of  Byron 
or  Scott.  *  And  yet,  the  life-work  of  Coleridge 
is  more  valuable  than  that  of  either  of  these. 
His  poetic  genius  was  at  least  equal  to  theirs, 
and  he,  much  more  than  either  of  them,  dealt 
in  ideas,  in  generative  thought.  Only  a  choice 
circle  felt  what  a  void  was  made  in  the  intel- 
lectual atmosphere  of  England.  The  pen  and 
tongue  of  an.  original  thinker,  of  an  eloquent 
expounder  of  fruitful  truths,  had  ceased  to 
move  forever. 

By  one  who  had  known  him  from  boyhood, 
who  for  fifty  years  had  enjoyed  the  privilege 
of  unbroken  friendship  with  him,  a  touch- 
ing tribute  was  paid  to  Coleridge.  For  some 
weeks  after  his  decease,  in  the  midst  of  con- 
versation among  friends,  the  noble  counte- 
nance of  Charles  Lamb  would  suddenly  grow 
abstracted,  and  solemnly,  half  interrogatively, 
he  would  exclaim,  "  Coleridge  is  dead  ! "  as 
though  such  a  death  were  too  enormous  to  be 
taken  into  the  mind  :  "  Coleridge  is  dead  !  " 


SHELLEY. 


TO  SHELLEY. 

Upon  thy  subtile  nature  was  a  bloom, 

Unearthly  in  its  tender,  gleamful  glow, 

As  thou  hadst  strayed  from  some  sane  star  where 

blow 
But  halcyon  airs,  and  here,  blinded  by  gloom. 
Didst  stumble,  for  the  lack  of  light  and  room. 
And  strike  and  wound  with  purposed  good  ;  and 

so. 
Through  Highest  pity,  thou  hadst  leave  to  go 
Early  to  where  for  each  earth-life  its  doom 
Awaits  it,  as  the  fruit  the  seed,  and  where 
Thy  multitudinous  imaginings, 
So  truthful  pure,  on  Heaven's  fulgent  stair 
Fit  issue  find,  and  mid  the  radiant  rings 
Of  mounting  Angels  thy  great  spirit's  glare 
Adds  to  the  brightness  of  the  brightest  things. 


SHELLEY. 


I. 


Man  might  be  symbolized  by  the  attitude  of 
Mercury  a-tiptoe  on  the  earth,  his  figure  tend- 
ing, and  his  eyes  and  upper  limbs  turned,  sky- 
ward, with  wings  on  his  heels,  to  waft  him 
toward  the  Heaven  whence  he  came.  Man 
on  earth  is  an  aspiring  animal,  the  only  animal 
that  aspires,  the  only  animal  that  can  behold 
the  constellations,  and,  therefore,  more  than  an 
animal, 

"  A  budded  angel  graft  on  clay." 

He  is  both  spirit  and  matter,  ethereal  and 
gross,  celestial  and  earthly.  The  conflict  of 
these  within  him,  —  the  upward  swing  of  spirit, 
the  downward  pull  of  sense, — while  it  unfolds 
and  displays  his  inborn  powers,  developing  and 
disciplining  his  nature,  schools  him  for  pro- 
gression and  immortality. 

The    equipment   of   man    being   thus   com- 
pounded of  the  immeasurable  elements  of  spirit 
9 


130  SHELLEY. 

and  matter,  the  scale  of  humanity  is  immense, 
from  the  black  abysms  of  beastly  earthiness  in 
the  Emperor  Vitellius  ascending  to  the  celes- 
tial spirituality  of  Jesus,  the  lower  half  of  the 
countless  intermediate  degrees  being  repre- 
sented by  Louis  Napoleon,  who  was  of  the 
earth  earthy,  of  the  world  worldly  ;  the  upper 
half  by  Goethe,  in  whose  orbicular  brain  there 
was  a  prolific  equilibrium,  and  who,  being  in 
warm  sympathy  with  all  the  affections,  was  yet 
enough  under  the  supreme  sway  of  the  spirit- 
ual and  moral  elements  to  make  renunciation 
his  law,  and  active  beneficence  his  practice, 
and  who,  a  born  poet,  became,  through  his  rich 
humanity,  a  luminous  sage,  while  he  remained 
a  genial  man  of  the  world. 

High  on  the  upper  division  of  the  scale 
glows  Shelley.  From  spiritual  currents  were 
distilled  into  his  brain  the  finer  essences  of 
humanity.  His  eyes  glistened  with  messages 
from  the  Infinite  :  his  was  the  privilege  to  hear 
angels  whisper.  With  the  earthy  he  was  not 
in  full  sympathy,  and  from  the  worldly  he  was 
repelled.  In  him  the  human  compound  of 
spirit  and  matter  lacked  closest  fusion,  and 
thence  his  composite  being  had  not  the  com- 
plete elastic  play  needed  for  the  most  effective 


SHELLEY.  131 

outward  expression  and  practical  manifesta- 
tion, such  play  as  is  exhibited  in  the  being  of 
Shakespeare.  But  Shelley  was  drowned  in 
the  Mediterranean  at  the  age  of  thirty.  Had 
he  lived  on  earth  the  other  twenty-two  years, 
who  can  presume  to  guess  what  he  would  or 
would  not  have  been  or  done  ? 

On  the  4th  of  August,  1792,  at  Field  Place 
in  Sussex,  the  seat  of  his  father,  Timothy 
Shelley,  was  born  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley, 
whose  lot  it  was,  through  the  light  of  resplen- 
dent poetic  genius,  to  make  an  ancient  and 
honorable  name  forever  illustrious.  He  was 
called  Percy  after  an  aunt  distantly  connected 
with  the  Northumberland  family.  Ambition 
of  aristocratic  affiliation  must  have  been  in- 
ordinate, even  desperate,  when  an  aunt's  being 
"  distantly  connected "  with  (not  related  to) 
the  house  of  Northumberland  was  seized  upon 
in  order  to  give  the  infant  heir  of  the  Shelleys 
the  semblance  of  relationship  to  the  famous 
Percys.  And  see  the  irony  of  fate.  If  by  such 
spasmodic  effort  anybody  would  get  a  flitting 
glimmer  of  glory,  it  was  not  to  be  the  house  of 
Shelley  that  this  baptismal  act  would  serve, 
but  the  house  of  Northumberland,  thenceforth 
presumed  to  have  some  kinship  to  the  exalted 


132  SHELLEY. 

poet.  To  another  poet,  the  greatest  of  poets, 
to  the  transfiguring  pen  of  Shakespeare,  this 
house  owes  most  of  its  historic  renown  and  all 
of  its  immortality.  In  pertinacity  of  will,  in 
dauntless  courage,  Shelley  is  not  unlike  his 
namesake,  Shakespeare's  great  Harry. 

The  name  of  Bysshe  the  poet  had  from  his 
paternal  grandfather,  who,  born  in  1731,  was 
made  a  baronet  in  1806.  Bysshe  was  re- 
markably handsome,  tall,  courteous,  and  clever. 
He  eloped  with  two  heiresses  of  good  family, 
and  thereby  strengthened  his  interest  in  his 
county,  and  at  the  same  time  so  enlarged  his 
pecuniary  basis,  that,  by  economy  and  shrewd 
management,  he  was  enabled  to  leave  at  his 
death  in  18 15  ^300,000  in  the  funds  and  an 
estate  in  land  that  yielded  ^20,000  a  year. 
The  man  who,  beginning  poor,  piled  up  such 
a  fortune  and  got  himself  made  a  baronet,  de- 
serves to  be  called  the  refounder  of  his  family. 
Money  and  influence  got  him  a  title,  and  the 
title  added  to  his  influence  and  dignified  his 
wealth. 

Sir  Bysshe  Shelley's  eldest  son,  Timothy, 
born  in  1753,  married  in  1791  Elizabeth  Pil- 
fold,  a  woman  of  rare  beauty.  Of  their  six 
children,   two   sons    and   four   daughters,    all 


SHELLEY.  133 

beautiful,  the  poet  was  the  first-born.  Timo- 
thy Shelley  was  a  commonplace  country  gen- 
tleman, not  cultivated,  a  little  pompous  on 
occasion,  hospitable  and  kindly,  and  a  good 
landlord.  One  wonders  how  a  mind  so  unil- 
luminated  could  be  the  immediate  precedent  of 
a  mental  blaze.  Lightning  transpierces  dense 
material  without  coruscation;  and  so  the  de- 
scending stream  of  genius  passes  through, 
without  kindling  the  brain  that  is  not  its  des- 
tined point  of  discharge,  to  explode  at  the  next 
human  stage  in  a  burst  of  electric  life. 

The  poet's  mother,  besides  being  beautiful, 
is  said  to  have  been  of  a  mild  and  liberal  nat- 
ure, intelligent,  with  some  culture.  In  her 
talent  for  letter-writing  she  gave  token  of  lit- 
erary capacity. 

More  akin  was  the  poet  to  his  grandfather 
than  to  his  father.  Sir  Bysshe  had  mental 
power  ;  he  could  take  the  initiative,  and  he 
was  independent  in  his  speculative  opinions. 
His  son  Timothy  he  did  not  like,  and  would  at 
times  curse  him  to  his  face.  At  the  .begin- 
ning of  the  present  century  the  manners  of 
English  gentlemen  were  coarser  than  they  are 
now.  Timothy  did  not  go  to  the  trouble  of 
having  speculative  opinions  ;    he  was  a   con- 


134  SHELLEY. 

formist  and  a  nominal  Christian.  Like  his 
father  he  swore  roundly  at  times,  and  like  him 
was  somewhat  penurious.  As  was  the  case 
with  most  of  his  class  at  that  day,  in  morals 
his  model  was  Lord  Chesterfield,  whom  he  at- 
tempted to  imitate  ;  he  told  his  son  Percy  that 
he  would  provide  for  any  number  of  illegiti- 
mate children,  but  would  not  forgive  a  mhal- 
liance. 

One  could  linger  on  the  lives  of  the  imme- 
diate progenitors  of  the  poet,  and  delve  far 
back  into  genealogy,  if  the  search  could  yield 
any  light  on  the  mystery  of  poetic  genius  ;  but 
this  celestial  fire  is  as  untraceable  to  its  origin 
as  it  is  incommunicable  when  present. 

Of  Shelley's  earliest  years  nothing  is  re- 
corded, nor  could  there  be  much  to  record. 
To  mothers  and  genuine  nurses  no  two  infants 
are  alike,  any  more  than  to  shepherds  are  any 
two  sheep ;  nevertheless,  with  their  little  ways 
and  doings,  their  tears  and  smiles,  they  can- 
not in  their  callowness  have  much  individual- 
ity, and,  like  spring  buds  in  an  orchard,  their 
bloom  is  quickly  swallowed  up  by  devouring 
sapful  growth. 

Happily  Shelley,  as  he  was  in  boyhood  from 
his   seventh   to    his   tenth  year   and  later,  is 


SHELLEY.  135 

brought  before  us  in  the  recollections  of  one 
of  his  sisters.  A  beautiful  boy,  with  large 
blue  eyes,  his  head  covered  with  ringlets,  a 
slender  figure  and  finely  formed  hands  and 
feet,  he  was  uncommonly  intelligent,  gentle, 
loving,  and  beloved  by  every  one. 

Delight  in  the  marvelous,  a  hunger  to  know, 
interest  in  the  transearthly,  showed  themselves 
in  these  early  years,  and,  backed  by  his  daring 
spirit,  made  him  a  fearless  questioner,  an  ar- 
dent investigator.  Already  the  invisible  world 
had  great  charm  for  him.  As  a  boy  he  was 
haunted  by  curiosity  about  death.  He  longed 
to  see  a  ghost.  He  was  ever  on  the  watch  to 
catch  some  glimpse  into  the  mysteries  of  nat- 
ure. In  that  wild,  beautiful  poern,  Alastor,  or 
the  Spirit  of  Solitude,  written  in  his  early 
manhood,  in  an  opening  passage  addressed  to 
the  "  Mother  of  this  unfathomable  world,"  he 
says  : 

"  I  have  made  my  bed 
In  charnels  and  on  coffins,  where  black  death 
Keeps  record  of  the  trophies  won  from  thee, 
Hoping  to  still  these  obstinate  questionings 
Of  thee  and  thine,  by  forcing  some  lone  ghost, 
Thy  messenger,  to  render  up  the  tale 
Of  what  we  are.     In  lone  and  silent  hours. 
When  night  makes  a  weird  sound  of  its  own  stillness, 
Like  an  inspired  and  desperate  alchymist 


136  SHELLEY. 

Staking  his  very  life  on  some  dark  hope, 
Have  I  mixed  awful  talk  and  asking  looks 
With  my  most  innocent  love." 

At  Field  Place  there  was  a  large  garret,  and 
a  room  which  had  been  closed  for  years  except 
an  entrance  made  by  the  removal  of  a  board  in 
the  garret  floor.  This  mysterious  room  Bysshe 
made  the  abode  of  an  old  alchemist  with  a  long 
beard.  To  his  sisters,  on  and  about  his  knees, 
listening  breathless  with  a  "  pleasant  dread," 
Bysshe  would,  evening  after  evening,  weave 
out  of  his  boy's  brain  wonderful  stories  of  this 
magician,  promising  them  that  "  some  day " 
they  should  go  and  see  him.  Then  he  would 
make  them  enact  strange  tales,  dressing  them 
as  spirits  and  |iends. 

A  little  later,  when  with  premature  curiosity 
he  had  taken  to  chemistry,  he  nearly  set  fire 
to  the  laundry  with  his  experiments.  He 
would  collect  his  sisters  and  as  many  other 
children  as  he  could,  place  them  hand  in  hand 
around  the  nursery-table,  and  give  them  a 
shock  with  an  electric  machine.  His  memory 
was  astonishing  ;  as  a  child  of  eight  or  nine 
years  he  recited  Gray's  lines  on  the  Cat  and 
the  Goldfish,  after  once  reading  them.  At  the 
bidding  of  his  father  he  would  repeat  pieces 
of  Latin  verse. 


SHELLEY.  137 

His  sister  relates  that  he  was  "  full  of  cheer- 
ful fun,  and  had  all  the  comic  vein  so  agreeable 
in  a  household."  This  is  noteworthy  ;  it  tends 
to  show  what  was  his  essential  nature.  At 
home  with  his  sisters  and  mother,  he  was 
cheerful,  ready  with  playful  tricks,  happy  as 
boys  are.  At  school  he  came  in  contact  with 
the  coarseness  and  tyranny  of  the  world,  and, 
being  refined,  independent,  and,  though  gentle, 
not  acquiescent,  contact  turned  into  conflict. 
An  earnest  seeker  after  hidden  and  forbidden 
knowledge  so  early  as  ten,  his  mind  was  in  ad- 
vance of  his  years.  At  Sion  House,  a  private 
academy  in  Brentford,  he  kept  aloof  from  boys' 
games  ;  for  him  physical  sports  had  no  attrac- 
tion. Already  in  his  brain  were  fermenting 
the  juices  from  which  were  to  be  distilled  some 
of  the  most  poetically-perfumed  pages  in  our 
language.  The  prescribed  lessons  he  mastered 
without  effort.  Greek  and  Latin  he  seemed 
to  learn  by  intuition. 

Shelley  was  precocious  as  boy  and  as  man  ; 
he  was  ahead  of  his  school-fellows,  far  ahead 
of  his  fellow-men.  Ever  reaching  forward  for 
more  and  better  than  was  around  him,  instead 
of  sympathy  he  met  with  frowning  opposition. 
To  one  of  his  nature  it  was  a  joy  to  give  pleas- 


138  SHELLEY. 

Lire,  and  he  was  ever  giving  offense.  The  prod- 
uct of  his  Kfe  here  turns  out  to  be  a  source  of 
deUght  to  all  who  can  value  whatever  is  best  in 
literature  ;  but  as  to  himself,  he  was  uncom- 
fortably misplaced.  Ever  on  the  stretch  after 
something  purer  and  higher  than  he  found 
about  him,  he  was  in  boyhood  and  in  youth  so 
much  in  conflict  with  persons  and  institutions, 
that  he  seemed  like  one  astray  on  the  earth. 

Shelley  was  occasionally  subject  to  somnam- 
bulism. This  began  so  early  as  his  tenth  year. 
Within  the  sleepwalker  are  mysterious  agen- 
cies that  move  him,  that  guide  him  safely  along 
precipices  with  his  eyes  shut,  and  empower 
him  to  act  and  speak  beside  himself,  as  it  were. 
For  the  time  a  passive  instrument,  when  he 
awakes  he  has  no  consciousness  of  what  hap- 
pened in  the  sleepwalking  state. 

As  boy,  as  youth,  as  man,  Shelley  had  a 
yearning  towards  the  world  of  spirits.  He 
watched  and  prayed  to  see  a  ghost.  This  was 
an  unlikeness  to  his  companions  that  would 
help  to  isolate  him.  Poets,  the  higher  poets, 
are  inspired  media  for  the  annunciation  and 
presentation  of  beauty  and  truth.  Inspiration 
descends  upon  the  poet.  By  mere  effort  of 
will  he  cannot  write  a  line  ;  he  is  dependent 


SHELLEY.  139 

on  his  Muse.  An  ideal  presentation  of  the 
poet  were  an  upturned  countenance  listening 
with  dreamy,  intelligent  joy.  The  poet,  the 
genuine  poet,  he  who  is  liable  to  inspiration,  is 
conscious  that  fresh  thoughts,  new  combina- 
tions, flashes  of  beauty,  come  to  him  suddenly, 
unsought  for,  unbidden,  come,  he  knows  not 
whence. 

Shelley's  worM  was  within  ;  but  thence  he 
drew  inspirations  to  nourish  his  aims  in  the 
outward  world.  In  these  aims  there  was  no 
self-seeking.  At  school  —  and  the  lesson  is 
repeated  at  college  —  boys  are  taught,  with 
ingenious  method,  to  be  selfishly  ambitious. 
The  universal  system  of  extreme  competition 
of  itself  embodies  this  teaching,  and  insures  its 
success.  Who  can  make  the  best  show  is  the 
best  man.  And  the  instruction  is  bettered  at 
home,  most  parents  being  in  full  accord  with 
the  intellectually  superior  mother  who,  being 
asked  as  to  her  son  at  school,  whether  he  was 
fulfilling  her  expectations,  answered  :  "  Yes  : 
he  is  ambitious,  and  that,  you  know,  is  ev^ery- 
thing." 

Now  Shelley  was  not  ambitious.  The  aim, 
the  earnest  aim,  of  his  manhood  and  his  youth, 
aye,  and  of  his  boyhood,  was  to  better  his  mind, 


I40  SHELLEY. 

to  emancipate  his  fellows.  More  light  in  him- 
self and  other  men,  not  more  power  for  him- 
self that  he  might  rule  other  men,  this  was  his 
incessant  desire.  All  his  pulses  throbbed  with 
love,  and  therefore  he  hated  tyranny,  and  he 
instinctively  felt  that  ambition  is  the  root  of 
tyranny.  Had  ever  a  noble  life  so  young  a 
consciousness  of  its  destiny  .?  Did  ever  a  great 
man  take  so  early  a  resolution  to  be  benefi- 
cent .''  Did  ever  a  benefactor  leap  in  boyhood 
into  his  high  career }  Shelley  was  about 
twelve  years  of  age  when  he  made  that  lofty 
—  stern  shall  I  call  it  .■'  —  vow  : 

"  I  will  be  wise, 
And  just,  and  free,  and  mild,  if  in  me  lies 
Such  power." 

But  the  whole  passage  should  be  given.  Of- 
ten as  it  may  have  been  read,  it  will  bear  read- 
ing again,  and  should  be  quoted  in  full,  as  it 
describes  a  most  important  moment  in  the  life 
of  Shelley : 

"  Thoughts  of  great  deeds  were  mine,  dear  Friend,  when  first 

The  clouds  which  wrap  this  world  from  youth  did  pass. 

I  do  remember  well  the  hour  which  burst 

My  spirit's  sleep  :  a  fresh  May-dawn  it  was, 

When  I  walked  forth  upon  the  glittering  grass, 

And  wept,  I  knew  not  why ;  until  there  rose. 

From  the  near  school-room,  voices,  that,  alas  ! 


SHELLEY.  141 

Were  but  one  echo  from  a  world  of  woes  — 
The  harsh  and  grating  strife  of  tyrants  and  of  foes. 

"  And  then  I  clasped  my  hands  and  looked  around  — 
But  none  was  near  to  mock  my  streaming  eyes, 
Which  poured  their  wan  drops  on  the  sunny  grouai  — 
So  without  shame  I  spake  :  '  I  will  be  wise, 
And  just,  and  free,  and  mild,  if  in  me  lies 
Such  power,  for  I  grow  weary  to  behold 
The  selfish  and  the  strong  still  tyrannize 
Without  reproach  or  check.'     I  then  controlled 
My  tears,  my  heart  grew  calm,  and  I  was  meek  and  bold. 

"  And  from  that  hour  did  I  with  earnest  thought 
Heap  knowledge  from  forbidden  mines  of  lore, 
Yet  nothing  that  my  tyrants  knew  or  taught 
I  cared  to  learn,  but  from  that  secret  store 
Wrought  linked  armour  for  my  soul,  before 
It  might  walk  forth  to  war  among  mankind. 
Thus  power  and  hope  were  strengthened  more  and  more 
Within  me,  till  there  came  upon  my  mind 
A  sense  of  loneliness,  a  thirst  with  which  I  pined." 

Shelley  was  always  going  out  of  himself. 
So  deep,  and  so  beautiful  in  its  depths,  is  hu- 
man nature,  so  wonderful  in  its  composite  ele- 
ments and  seeming  contradictions,  that  there 
is  no  truth  more  sohd  and  prolific  than  this, 
that  the  surest,  happiest  way  of  serving  one's 
self  is  to  forget  one's  self.  Shelley  began 
when  young  to  practice  this  profound  truth. 
As  a  boy  he  had  the  wish  to  be  helpful  to 


142  SHELLEY. 

Others.  When  not  much  more  than  a  child 
himself  he  took  a  sort  of  paternal  interest  in 
children.  His  sister  relates  how  he  wanted  to 
purchase  a  little  girl  to  bring  her  up  into  better 
conditions.  A  tumbler,  who  came  to  the  back 
door  at  Field  Place  to  perform  her  feats,  at- 
tracted his  attention  for  this  purpose.  A  boy 
had  no  means  of  setting  a  practical  hand  to 
such  a  project,  but  his  heart  was  in  it.  When 
he  went  to  see  his  sisters  at  the  boarding- 
school  in  Clapham  he  would  ask  questions 
about  their  comfort.  One  day  his  ire  was 
roused  at  finding  one  of  them  with  a  black 
mark  hung  about  her  neck  for  some  slight  of- 
fense. His  wrath  was  more  against  the  sys- 
tem than  that  his  sister  should  be  so  punished. 
At  the  age  of  fourteen  or  fifteen  his  clear  pure 
intuitions  told  him  that  for  the  healthfullest 
unfolding  of  the  faculties  in  youthful  education 
more  profitable  are  appeals  to  the  higher  feel- 
ings than  to  the  lower. 

With  all  this  unjuvenile  interest  in  others, 
this  forward-reaching  benevolence,  Percy  was 
a  thorough  boy  in  animal  spirits  and  fondness 
for  fun.  On  one  occasion  he  came  to  the 
school  with  the  elders  of  the  family,  and  was 
so  full   of   pranks    that  the  assistance  of  his 


SHELLEY.  143 

cousin  Harriet  Grove,  his  first  love,  had  to  be 
invoked  to  keep  the  wild  boy  quiet. 

He  was  fifteen  when  sent  to  Eton.  At  the 
core  of  Shelley  there  was  an  intense  fire  that 
heated  his  impulses  to  irresistible  momentum, 
and  projected  him  into  manhood  prematurely 
in  certain  directions.  At  Eton  he  was  a  de- 
fiant member  of  the  institution.  He  defied 
his  teachers  by  chafing  against  their  rule,  and 
by  neglecting  their  imposed  exercises,  giving 
his  time  to  translating  Pliny's  Natural  History, 
and  to  getting  an  insight  into  the  mysteries 
of  chemistry  and  electricity.  He  defied  his 
school-fellows  by  standing  aloof  from  their 
games  and  sports,  by  exceptional  studies,  and 
more  than  all  by  resistance  to  the  fagging 
system,  against  which  he  tried  to  organize  re- 
volt. Fagging,  whereby  the  younger  boys 
were  made  to  do  the  bests  of  the  older,  even 
at  times  in  menial  offices,  was  the  result  of  ar- 
istocratic privilege,  which  fosters  a  domineer- 
ing spirit,  combined  —  strange  as  this  may 
sound  —  with  a  British  love  of  freedom,  whose 
spirit  tends  by  no  means  to  equality,  but  to 
each  one  being  free  to  exercise  his  powers  as 
he  pleases  and  can.  A  satirist  might  say  that 
this   combination    was    soldered   together   by 


144  SHELLEY. 

English  animalism,   which  is  sometimes  bru- 
tality. 

Wanting  the  bold  spirits  who  take  the  initi- 
ative in  resisting  tyranny  and  abuses,  civili- 
zation would  stagnate,  its  vitality  smothered 
under  formalism  and  usurpation.  The  most 
glorious  and  venerable  figures  in  history  are 
they  whose  sounder  instincts  and  clearer  vis- 
ion made  them  beneficent  prophets,  and  whose 
courageous  speech  made  them  martyrs  for 
truth,  through  the  ignorance  and  obliquity  of 
their  contemporaries. 

The  directors  of  Eton  were  too  obtuse,  and 
too  much  ruled  by  routine  in  place  of  principle, 
to  take  a  hint  from  the  preference  of  their 
brightest- scholar  for  natural  history,  a  scholar 
so  bright  that  without  effort  he  was  at  the 
same  time  one  of  the  foremost  in  Greek  and 
Latin.  The  great  soul  of  Shelley  revolted, 
against  the  odious  practice  of  fagging,  and  by 
his  courage  and  the  individual  force  of  his  per- 
sonality he  successfully  resisted  its  application 
to  himself. 

His  school-fellows  would  sometimes  goad 
him  into  a  momentary  rage,  and  then  run 
away :  their  offensive  mischievousness  he  re- 
quited by  helping  them  with  their  tasks.     The 


SHELLEY.  145 

boys  of  his  own  age  are  said  to  have  been  de- 
voted to  him  ;  but  it  is  the  nature  and  fate  of 
high  gifts  to  isolate  their  possessor.  That 
which  is  the  source  of  new  revealments  of 
beauty  and  life,  for  the  delight  and  profit  of 
millions  through  the  ages,  is  often  the  cause 
of  unpopularity  and  even  odium  among  con- 
temporaries. At  Eton,  Shelley  was  sometimes 
called  the  "  mad  Shelley."  Genius,  having  few 
fellows,  is  at  first  cut  off  from  one  of  the  sweet- 
est joys  of  humanity,  fellow-feeling.  This  is 
the  price  paid  for  its  superiority.  Shelley  may 
be  accounted  rarely  fortunate  in  that  he  found 
in  one  of  his  teachers  a  sympathizing  friend. 
Dr.  Lind,  a  tutor  at  Eton,  appreciated  and 
loved  him,  encouraged  him  in  his  fondness 
for  chemistry,  and  assisted  him  in  the  study. 
What  a  boon  was  this  sympathy  to  his  young, 
warm,  hungering  heart,  already  dimly  athrob 
with  the  coming  music  of  Prometheus  and  Ado- 
nais.  The  gratitude  of  Shelley  has  given  Dr. 
Lind  a  twofold  immortality,  in  the  form  of  re- 
vered sages,  one  in  the  Revolt  of  Islam,  the 
other  in  Prince  Athanase,  where  he  is  thus 
presented : 

"  Prince  Athanase  had  one  beloved  friend  ; 
An  old,  old  man,  with  hair  of  silver  white, 
10 


146  SHELLEY. 

And  lips  where  heavenly  smiles  would  hang  and  blend 

With  his  wise  words,  and  eyes  whose  arrowy  light 
Shone  like  the  reflex  of  a  thousand  minds." 

In  Shelley  "  love  and  life  were  twins." 
Love  will  ever  be  giving,  and  in  all  ways 
during  his  whole  life  Shelley  was  a  giver. 
When,  just  before  leaving  Eton,  he  received 
from  a  publisher  forty  pounds  for  Zastrozzi,  a 
novel,  he  spent  most  of  the  money  in  giving  a 
supper  to  eight  of  his  young  friends.  Zas- 
troszi,  written  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  is  de- 
scribed as  an  extravagant  tale,  without  sub- 
stance or  form.  At  this  early  age  Shelley 
dashed  courageously  into  the  battle-field  of 
authorship.  That  he  was  as  crude  as  he  was 
young,  we  learn  from  this,  that  his  favorite 
poets  were  Southey  and  Monk  Lewis,  and  that 
he  delighted  in  Mrs.  Radcliffe's  romances.  He 
and  his  sister  Elizabeth  offered  to  Mathews 
a  play  of  their  joint  production,  which  was  at 
once  declined.  When  he  was  eighteen  he  sent 
a  poem  to  Thomas  Campbell  for  his  opinion  of 
it.  Campbell  returned  it  with  the  comment 
that  there  were  only  two  good  lines  in  it : 

"  It  seemed  as  if  an  angel's  sigh 
Had  breathed  the  i^laintive  symphony." 

At  this  time  the   beautiful   earnest   youth 


SHELLEY.  147 

seems  to  have  so  magnetized  the  publisher 
Stockdale  as  to  make  him  the  instrument  of 
bringing  into  the  world  volumes  that  were,  as 
merchantable  wares,  of  very  little  value.  As 
Mr.  Symonds,  in  his  admirable  Life  of  Shel- 
ley, says  :  "  Throughout  his  life  Shelley  exer- 
cised a  wonderful  fascination  over  the  people 
with  whom  he  came  in  contact,  and  almost 
always  won  his  way  with  them  as  much  by 
personal  charm  as  by  determined  and  impas- 
sioned will." 

Between  Shelley's  quitting  Eton  and  his 
entering  Oxford  there  is  an  interval  of  many 
months.  He  is  said  to  have  left  Eton  ab- 
ruptly, withdrawn  to  avoid  expulsion.  This 
may  have  been.  A  youth  of  seventeen,  ten- 
der, yearning  for  love  and  finding  little,  disin- 
terested, wrathful  at  injustice,  premature  in 
mental  capacity,  with  the  insight  and  impul- 
siveness of  genius,  and  with  that  unreserve 
which  is  sometimes  an  attendant  upon  genius, 
wanting  in  worldly  self-restraint  and  prudence, 
would,  in  a  public  school  such  as  Eton  then 
was,  inevitably  be  a  protester  and  a  rebel. 
But  his  revolt  was  the  opposite  of  Lucifer's  ;  it 
was  a  revolt,  not  against  God  but  against  the 
Devil,  not  against  good  but  against  evil.    Shel- 


148  SHELLEY. 

ley  ever  chafed  at  unjust  inequalities.  The 
world  around  him  —  and  Eton  was  a  type  of 
the  world  —  bristled  with  such  inequalities, 
was  encrusted  with  the  obstructive  indurations 
of  custom,  was  offensive  with  soulless  formali- 
ties and  pedantries,  with  fat  pretensions  and 
lean  performance,  with  lies  that  would  pass 
themselves  off  for  truth. 

This  chapter  cannot  be  more  fitly  closed 
than  with  a  letter  from  a  friend  and  school-fel- 
low of  Shelley.  Mr.  Halliday,  one  can  discern 
in  his  beautiful  letter,  is  a  clear-minded,  sound- 
hearted,  genial  gentleman,  whose  name,  as 
that  of  one  of  the  few  who  loved  and  valued 
Shelley,  deserves  to  be  associated  with  that  of 
the  immortal  poet. 

Glenthorne,  February  27,  1857. 

My  dear  Madam,  —  Your  letter  has  taken 
me  back  to  the  sunny  time  of  boyhood,  "  when 
thought  is  speech,  and  speech  is  truth  ;  "  when 
I  was  the  friend  and  companion  of  Shelley  at 
Eton.  What  brought  us  together  in  that  small 
world  was,  I  suppose,  kindred  feelings,  and 
the  predominance  of  fancy  and  imagination. 
Many  a  long  and  happy  walk  have  I  had  with 
him  in  the  beautiful  nei<ihborhood  of  dear  old 


SHELLEY.  149 

Eton.  Wc  used  to  wander  for  hours  about 
Clewer,  Frogmore,  the  Park  at  Windsor,  the 
Terrace  ;  and  I  was  a  delighted  and  wilHng 
listener  to  his  marvelous  stories  of  fairy-land, 
and  apparitions,  and  spirits,  and  haunted 
ground ;  and  his  speculations  were  then  (for 
his  mind  was  far  more  developed  than  mine) 
of  the  world  beyond  the  grave.  Another  of 
his  favorite  rambles  was  Stoke  Park,  and  the 
picturesque  churchyard,  where  Gray  is  said  to 
have  written  his  Elegy,  of  which  he  was  very 
fond.  I  was  myself  far  too  young  to  form  any 
estimate  of  character,  but  I  loved  Shelley  for 
his  kindliness  and  affectionate  ways  :  he  was 
not  made  to  endure  the  rough  and  boisterous 
pastime  at  Eton,  and  his  shy  and  gentle  nature 
was  glad  to  escape  far  away  to  muse  over 
strange  fancies,  for  his  mind  was  reflective, 
and  teeming  with  deep  thought.  His  lessons 
were  child's  play  to  him,  and  his  power  of 
Latin  versification  marvelous.  I  think  I  re- 
member some  long  work  he  had  even  then 
commenced,  but  I  never  saw  it.  His  love  of 
nature  was  intense,  and  the  sparkling  poetry 
of  his  mind  shone  out  of  his  speaking  eye, 
when  he  was  dwelling  on  anything  good  or 
great.     He  certainly  was  not  happy  at  Eton, 


150  SHELLEY. 

for  his  was  a  disposition  that  needed  especial 
personal  superintendence,  to  watch,  and  cher- 
ish, and  direct  all  his  noble  aspirations,  and 
the  remarkable  tenderness  of  his  heart.  He 
had  great  moral  courage,  and  feared  nothing 
but  what  was  base,  and  false,  and  low.  He 
never  joined  in  the  usual  sports  of  the  boys, 
and,  what  is  remarkable,  never  went  out  in  a 
boat  on  the  river.  What  I  have  here  set  down 
will  be  of  little  use  to  you,  but  will  jDlease  you 
as  a  sincere,  and  truthful,  and  humble  tribute 
to  one  whose  good  name  was  sadly  whispered 
away.  Shelley  said  to  me,  when  leaving  Ox- 
ford under  a  cloud  :  "  Halliday,  I  am  come  to 
say  good-by  to  you,  if  you  are  not  afraid  to 
be  seen  with  me  !  "  I  saw  him  once  again,  in 
the  autumn  of  1814,  in  London,  when  he  was 
glad  to  introduce  me  to  his  wife.  I  think  he 
said  he  was  just  come  from  Ireland.  You 
have  done  quite  right  in  applying  to  me  direct, 
and  I  am  only  sorry  that  I  have  no  anecdotes, 
or  letters,  of  that  period,  to  furnish, 
I  am  yours  truly, 

Walter  S.  Halliday. 


II. 

At  the  age  of  eighteen  Shelley  entered  Ox- 
ford, an  impassioned  lover  of  his  cousin,  Har- 
riet Grove.  A  boyish  fancy  had  deepened  into 
ardent  devotion.  They  had  corresponded  for 
some  time,  and  looked  upon  themselves  as  en- 
gaged. About  the  period  that  Shelley  went 
to  Oxford  some  startling  speculative  opinions 
in  one  of  his  letters  alarmed  Harriet  and  her 
parents,  and  loosened  the  tie  between  them, 
which  was  entirely  severed  some  months  later 
on  his  expulsion  from  college. 

Shelley  was  matriculated  as  a  commoner  of 
University  College,  Oxford,  towards  the  end 
of  October,  1810.  His  first  appearance  is  thus 
described  by  a  fellow-freshman,  who  happened 
to  sit  next  to  him  at  the  dinner-table  in  the 
college  hall  : 

"  His  figure  was  slight,  and  his  aspect  re- 
markably youthful,  even  at  our  table,  where  all 
were  very  young.  He  seemed  thoughtful  and 
absent.  He  ate  little,  and  had  no  acquaintance 
with  any  one.     I  know  not  how  it  was  that  we 


152  SHELLEY. 

fell  into  conversation,  for  such  familiarity  was 
unusual,  and,  strange  to  say,  much  reserve 
prevailed  in  a  society  where  there  could  not 
possibly  be  occasion  for  any.  We  have  often 
endeavored  in  vain  to  recollect  in  what  man- 
ner our  discourse  began,  and  especially  by 
what  transition  it  passed  to  a  subject  sufiQ- 
ciently  remote  from  all  the  associations  we 
were  able  to  trace.  The  stranger  had  ex- 
pressed an  enthusiastic  admiration  for  poetical 
and  imaginative  works  of  the  German  school. 
I  dissented  from  his  criticisms.  He  upheld 
the  originality  of  the  German  writings.  I  as- 
serted their  want  of  nature." 

They  got  at  once  into  a  warm  discussion  on 
the  comparative  merits  of  German  and  Italian 
literature,  talking,  as  most  young  and  some 
older  men  will,  earnestly  and  dogmatically  of 
matters  about  which  they  knew  little  or  noth- 
ing, as  both  afterwards  confessed  to  one  an- 
other. After  dinner  Shelley's  new  acquaint- 
ance proposed  to  him  that  they  adjourn  to  his 
room.  Here  Shelley  went  off  with  like  zeal 
into  a  eulogy  of  the  physical  sciences,  espe- 
cially chemistry,  of  which,  however,  he  knew 
something.  His  companion  gives  a  picture  of 
him  as  he  appeared  on  that  evening  which  has 
the  lifelike  look  of  a  sun-portrait: 


SHELLEY.  153 

"  His  features  were  not  symmetrical  (the 
mouth,  perhaps,  excepted),  yet  was  the  ei^ect  of 
the  whole  extremely  powerful.  They  breathed 
an  animation,  a  fire,  an  enthusiasm,  a  vivid 
and  preternatural  intelligence,  that  I  never 
met  with  in  any  other  countenance.  Nor  was 
the  moral  expression  less  beautiful  than  the 
intellectual  ;  for  Iheie  was  a  softness,  a  deli- 
cacy, a  gentleness,  and  especially  (though  this 
will  surprise  many)  that  air  of  profound  relig- 
ious veneration,  that  characterizes  the  best 
works,  and  chiefly  the  frescoes  (and  into  these 
they  infused  their  whole  souls),  of  the  great 
masters  of  Florence  and  of  Rome." 

He  discoursed  long  about  chemistry,  some- 
times sitting,  sometimes  standing  before  the 
fire,  sometimes  pacing  up  and  down  the  room. 
When  the  clocks  struck  seven  he  said  suddenly 
that  he  must  go  to  a  lecture  on  mineralogy, 
from  which,  he  said  warmly,  he  expected  great 
pleasure  and  instruction.  His  host's  invitation 
to  return  to  tea  he  gladly  accepted  ;  then, 
snatching  up  his  cap,  he  hurried  out  of  the 
room,  and  his  footsteps  were  heard  as  he  ran 
through  the  silent  quadrangle  and  along  High 
Street. 

In  an  hour  again  were  heard  the  footsteps 


154  SHELLEY. 

of  one  running  quickly.  Shelley  burst  into  the 
room,  and,  shivering  while  he  rubbed  his  hands 
over  the  fire,  declared  how  much  he  had  been 
disappointed.  Few  were  there  and  the  lecture 
was  dull,  languid.  "  What  did  the  man  talk 
about .''  "  asked  the  host.  "  Stones  !  stones  ! 
About  stones,  stones,  stones,  nothing  but 
stones !  and  so  dryly.  It  was  wonderfully 
tiresome." 

Stones  instead  of  bread  are  what  even  earth- 
iest plodders  are  liable  to  receive,  especially  in 
youth  ;  but  to  their  buoyant  brothers,  the  ideal- 
ists, the  stones  are  heavier  and  harder,  and 
come  oftener,  even  into  manhood  and  age,  for, 
to  the  last,  your  idealist  hugs  the  visions  of  his 
jooetic  brain.  This  dull  lecture  was  but  a  peb- 
ble to  some  of  the  stones  already  thrown  at 
Shelley  and  to  many  yet  to  be  thrown.  But  if 
they  wounded,  they  never  crushed,  nor  even 
embittered  him.  In  his  soul  there  was  a  fer- 
vor and  force  that  bore  him  up,  while  the  ideal- 
ist found  a  twofold  utterance,  in  speech  and 
in  deeds.  His  deeds  were  fragrant  with  the 
poetry  of  disinterestedness,  generosity,  noble- 
ness, love.  His  poetry  is  enriched  with  the 
gold  of  truth  and  wisdom.  The  substantiality 
of  Shelley's  poetry  is  not  at  first  apparent,  ow- 


SHELLEY.  155 

ing  to  flowers  and  garlands  of  blooming  imagi- 
nations that  hang  thick  about  it,  just  as  the 
countless  ribbed  lines  and  delicate  tracery 
mask  the  solidness  of  a  great  cathedral,  while 
they  give  lightness  to  its  spire  and  upstretch- 
ing  arches. 

The  fellow-student  with  whom  Shelley  thus 
became  intimate  in  a  day  was  Thomas  Jeffer- 
son Hogg,  to  whose  graphic  pen  we  owe,  what 
is  a  priceless  legacy  to  posterity,  a  picture  of 
Shelley's  short  Oxford  life,  and  of  his  first 
years  afterwards.  The  two  became  insepara- 
ble friends,  talked  and  read  and  strolled  to- 
gether, day  and  night.  Hogg  was  a  positivist, 
who  gave  in  to  no  imaginative  flights,  a  dry, 
somewhat  caustic  humorist.  He  became  in 
after  years  an  eminent  lawyer  and  staunch 
tory,  but  seems  to  have  seized  at  once  the 
greatness  of  Shelley. 

Among  the  books  they  read  together  was 
Plato,  who  is  so  full  of  charm  and  light  to  those 
of  the  thoughtful  who  are  spiritually-minded. 
To  take  up  with  all  his  soul  any  theory  that 
struck  him  favorably  was  the  way  with  Shel- 
ley's earnest,  zealous  nature.  Plato's  doc- 
trine of  preexistence  delighted  him.  To  chil- 
dren it  gave  a  mysterious  significance.     One 


156  SHELLEY. 

day,  after  a  long  session  over  Plato,  sallying 
out  for  their  daily  walk,  they  met  on  Magda- 
len Bridge  a  woman  with  a  child  in  her  arms. 
"  Will  your  baby  tell  us  anything  about  pre- 
existcnce,  madam  ? "  said  Shelley,  with  an  ear- 
nestness which  for  a  moment  alarmed  the 
mother,  who  made  no  reply.  Shelley  repeated 
the  question  in  the  same  tone,  looking  wist- 
fully at  the  child.  "  He  cannot  speak,  sir," 
said  the  mother  serenely.  "  Worse  and  worse," 
cried  Shelley,  with  a  look  of  disappointment, 
pathetically  shaking  his  long  hair  about  his 
beautiful  young  face.  "But  surely  the  babe 
can  speak  if  he  will,  for  he  is  only  a  few 
weeks  old ;  he  cannot  have  forgotten  the  use 
of  speech  in  so  short  a  time."  It  was  a  fine 
placid  boy,  who  looked  up  and  smiled.  Shel- 
ley lovingly  pressed  the  fat  cheeks  with  his 
fingers,  ejaculating,  as  they  walked  away, 
"  How  provokingly  close  are  these  new-born 
babes !  But  it  is  not  the  less  certain,  notwith- 
standing the  cunning  attempts  to  conceal  the 
truth,  that  all  knowledge  is  reminiscence." 

In  Hogg's  account  of  this  Platonic  inter- 
view with  one  of  the  latest  comers  from  ante- 
natal realms,  there  is  one  omission.  He  gives 
no  hint  that  this  was  subtle  humor.     Shelley 


SHELLEY.  157 

was  in  earnest  play  with  Plato's  fanciful  theory. 
Such  play  is  the  surest  and  quickest  means  of 
stripping  a  proposition  of  its  plausibilities,  and 
of  showing  whether  it  be  a  truth  or  a  preten- 
sion. Tossing  it  up  into  the  glancing  rays  of 
humor  lets  in  upon  it  side  lights  and  cross 
lights  that  help  much  to  reveal  its  real  nature. 
Shelley  could  not  have  written  Don  Quixote, 
but  earnest  as  life  was  to  him,  he  not  only  had 
buoyancy  to  rise  mentally  above  its  realities, 
which  he  was,  indeed,  too  prone  to  do,  but 
from  this  elevation  to  seize  the  absurd  and 
gaze  at  it,  not  with  scorn,  but  with  sympa- 
thetic pity.  Humor  might  be  defined  as  a  ten- 
der, gay  efflorescence  out  of  the  spiritual  fac- 
ulties. It  has  a  poetic  element,  but  all  great 
poets  are  not,  by  virtue  of  their  creative  gift, 
susceptible  of  humor ;  v/itness  Dante,  Milton, 
Wordsworth.  A  very  good  man  may  be  with- 
out humor,  but  a  bad  man  is  inherently  inca- 
pable of  it ;  his  earnestness  is  a  selfish,  not  a 
spiritual  earnestness.  Did  Bonaparte  ever  ex- 
hibit a  ray  of  humor  .-'  Humor  develops  itself 
somewhat  late.  Shelley  gives  evidence  of  it 
in  Peter  Bell  the  Third,  and  in  Swellfoot  the 
Tyratit. 
Shelley's  being  was  founded  on  love,  fed 


158  SHELLEY. 

upon  love.  His  life-blood  was  quickened  by 
love,  he  yearned  for  love  in  order  to  grow,  to 
put  forth  his  flowers,  to  ripen  his  fruit,  to  out- 
fill  his  high,  beautiful  stature.  There  was  no 
love  at  Oxford  ;  instead  of  love  were  academic 
rules.  Here  was  a  warm,  a  very  warm,  hu- 
man being,  a  most  loving  and  most  lovable 
young  man  of  eighteen,  blooming  into  man- 
hood, sparkling  with  intelligence,  glowing  with 
affectionateness.  Cold,  and  bleak,  and  hard 
was  everything  about,  above  him.  Among 
the  tutors  and  professors  and  head  masters 
not  a  soul  that  cared  to  gauge  the  throb  of 
this  great  soul.  Among  the  numerous  staff 
of  university  officers  there  was  not  one  who 
thought  of  dismounting  from  his  old  spavined 
steed  of  routine  to  go  forward  and  question 
this  new  recruit.  No,  indeed,  the  system  was 
military  in  its  impersonality. 

Here  was  a  chief  seat  of  learning  on  the 
earth,  a  temple  of  the  Muses,  overhung  by 
the  halo  of  religious  consecration.  And  now 
within  its  walls,  just  inscribed  as  a  fresh  mem- 
ber, was  a  youth,  athirst,  beyond  his  age,  for 
knowledge,  ready,  eager  to  learn,  eager  to  be 
taught,  outreaching  toward  the  unknown,  long- 
ing for  recognition  by  invisible  power,  looking 


SHELLEY.  159 

earnestly  for   a   sign    from    above.     But    the 
signs  at  Oxford  were  all  from  below,  a  little 
heavenliness  smothered  under  veils  of  earthi- 
ness,  fat  places  and  mechanical  performance, 
in  the  religion  no  soul,  and  thence  in  the  life 
no   daily  beauty.     When  a  student  at   Cam- 
bridge   Wordsworth    became    disgusted    with 
the  hollowness  of  his  superiors.     His  biogra- 
pher and  nephew,  the   Rev.  C.   Wordsworth, 
intending  to  give  a  playful  blow  to  his  uncle's 
presumption,  says  :  "  The  youthful  undergrad- 
uate looked  down  upon  some  of  his  instruct- 
ors."    Bad  is  it  for  the  pupil  when  he  has  a 
right    to   look    down    upon   his    teachers,   but 
worse  for  the  teachers.     Youths,  nineteen  out 
of    twenty,    are   willing,    are    rejoiced,    to    be 
taught.     Could  Shelley,  that  young  visionary 
Plato,  have  found  a  genial   Socrates,   how  he 
would   have  loved  him,  and  listened  to   him, 
and  revered   him !     We  saw  what    Dr.    Lind 
was    to    him    and    he    to  Dr.  Lind.     To  a  fit 
teacher  at  Oxford,   Shelley  would  have  been 
docile,  pliable,  grateful.     With  what  hope  he 
went    to    the   lecture    on    mineralogy !     With 
what  disappointment  he  came   back  from  it! 
Hungry    for    bread,    they   gave    him    stones  ; 
eager  for  principles,  for  the  reason  of  things, 


l6o  SHELLEY. 

they   gave    him    the   dryest    facts.     And    so 
throughout. 

What,  for  his  unfolding  and  strengthening, 
the  youtli  entering  manhood  primarily  needs, 
and  the  poet  especially  needs,  is  sympath}'-,  rec- 
ognition, appreciation  through  the  heart.  His 
friend  Hogg  thus  eloquently  describes  the  pas- 
sionate, joyful  expectation  with  which  Shelley 
approached  an  ancient  volume  of  promise :  "His 
cheeks  glowed,  his  eyes  became  bright,  his 
whole  frame  trembled,  and  his  entire  attention 
was  immediately  swallowed  up  in  the  depths 
of  contemplation.  The  rapid  and  vigorous  con- 
version of  his  soul  to  intellect  can  only  be  com- 
pared with  the  instantaneous  ignition  and  com- 
bustion, which  dazzle  the  sight,  when  a  bundle 
of  dry  reeds,  or  other  light  inflammable  sub- 
stance, is  thrown  upon  a  fire  already  rich  with 
accumulated  heat." 

If,  instead  of  an  old  volume,  there  had  been 
a  new  living  man  to  read  !  If  among  his  Ox- 
ford teachers  a  single  one  had  to  this  glowing 
uplooking  youth  put  forth  a  friendly  hand,  had 
opened  to  him  a  sympathetic  heart !  To  the 
poet  —  and  Shelley  had  in  him  the  material 
for  one  of  the  greatest  of  poets  —  the  most 
attractive,  the  most  influential,  of  created  be- 


SHELLEY.  l6l 

ings  is  an  able,  soulful  man.  The  poet's  priv- 
ilege it  is  to  be  drawn  with  resistless  force  to 
the  works  of  God,  to  outward  nature  and  in- 
ward nature,  and  a  soulful  man  is  God's  mas- 
terpiece. 

To  a  Shelley  what  was  a  formal,  reserved, 
distant  tutor  or  professor  ?  This  youth  was 
full  of  sap :  he  wanted  sunshine  to  help  it  to 
mount,  and  these  people  were  full  of  shade  and 
chill.  Years  after  this  period,  a  gentleman 
meeting  Shelley  at  a  social  party,  and  seeing 
him  uncomfortable,  remarked  that  there  must 
be  something  wrong  about  such  gatherings 
when  a  man  like  Shelley  was  glad  to  get  away 
from  them.  But  the  social  instinct  is  irrepres- 
sible, and  ought  not  to  be  repressed.  People 
ought  to  hold  such  meetings  although  a  Shel- 
ley does  not  feel  comfortable  at  them.  Goethe 
has  a  playful  fling  at  them.  A  scholar,  he  re- 
lates, having  been  persuaded  to  go  to  such  a 
party,  on  being  asked  afterwards  how  he  liked 
the  company,  answered,  "  Were  they  books  I 
would  not  read  them."  But  the  one  social 
gathering  was  not  gotten  up  to  please  the 
scholar,  nor  the  other  to  give  enjoyment  to 
Shelley ;  whereas,  Oxford  was  gotten  up  to 
instruct  and  unfold  youth,  and  here  was  the 


1 62  SHELLEY. 

brightest  of  youths,  in  whom  there  was  more 
to  unfold  than  in  any  other  youth  at  that  day 
within  the  confines  of  the  British  Isles,  and 
him  Oxford  expelled. 

Shelley  was  a  diligent  reader,  an  indefatiga- 
ble student,  but  not  in  the  beaten  track  of  col- 
lege exercises.  Besides  Plato  he  read  Locke 
and  Hume,  and  their  followers,  the  French 
materialists.  A  youth  who  enjoyed  the  verse 
of  Southey  and  Monk  Lewis  and  delighted  in 
Mrs.  Radcliffe  was  still  young  in  judgment. 
For  a  time  the  materialists  took  him  captive. 
Like  other  ardent  natures,  Shelley  concen- 
trated upon  what  he  took  in  hand  all  the  pow- 
ers of  his  mind.  He  assailed  a  subject  as  with 
the  focused  flame  of  a  blowpipe.  He  poured 
the  intensest  warmth  of  his  faculties  upon  a 
question  to  make  it  yield  more  light.  He  was 
not  merely  a  seeker,  but  a  high-strung  seeker, 
of  knowledge  and  truth.  He  wrote  letters  to 
noted  people,  strangers  to  him,  to  open  discus- 
sions on  topics  that  for  the  time  absorbed  him. 

In  this  spirit,  under  the  temporary  influence 
of  Hume,  he  penned  and  printed,  for  private 
circulation,  two  or  three  pages  of  reasoning 
which  he  called  TJic  Necessity  of  AtJieisni.  This 
trifle  (for  such  it  was  notwithstanding  the  ter- 


SHELLEY.  163 

rible  aspect  it  wore)  a  Fellow  of  another  col- 
lege took  to  the  Head  of  Shelley's  college. 
The  Head  (where  was  the  Heart  ?)  called  to- 
gether his  Fellows.  They  passed  a  decree  ex- 
pelling Shelley,  engrossed  it  in  due  form,  and 
sealed  it  with  the  college  seal.  They  then 
summoned  Shelley,  and  asked  him  if  he  was 
the  author  of  the  pamphlet.  Upon  his  refus- 
ing to  answer  :  "  Then  you  are  expelled,"  said 
the  Head  Master,  "  and  I  desire  you  to  quit  the 
college  early  to-morrow  morning  at  the  latest." 
They  handed  him  the  sealed  packet,  and  he 
left  them.  Thus,  through  the  soulless  blunder 
of  one  of  her  colleges,  Oxford  snatched  from 
the  glittering  intellectual  diadem  that  encircles 
her  venerable  brow  its  brightest  jewel,  and 
trampled  it  in  the  mud. 

Were  these  Fellows  and  their  chief  Chris- 
tians .■"  They  believed  themselves  to  be,  and 
on  the  street  and  in  the  halls  they  passed  for 
model  Christians.  O  Christ !  in  thy  holy  name 
what  absurd  and  what  diabolical  deeds  have 
been,  and  continue  to  be,  enacted.  The  devil- 
self  weaves  so  dark  a  veil  about  the  soul  that 
the  angel-self  is  nearly  smothered  into  blind- 
ness. How  could  these  Fellows  pray  to  "  our 
Father  which  art  in   Heaven,"   so  unfatherly 


164  SHELLEY. 

and  cruel  were  they  to  one  of  God's  heaven- 
liest  children  !  What  sense  of  responsibility 
had  they,  except  to  that  cold  corporate  ab- 
straction, University  College  ?  To  their  pride- 
stuffed  pharisaic  ears  were  inaudible  the  beat- 
ings of  the  warm  pulse  of  an  ingenuous,  as- 
piring youth.  The  Roman  satirist's  profound 
words,  Diaxiuia  debetiLr  piiero  revercntia,  were 
shallow  paganism  to  their  unchristian  hearts. 
For  this  beautiful  youth,  with  his  angelic  coun- 
tenance, who  stood  before  their  judgment-seat 
they  had  as  much  fellow  feeling  as  the  scribes 
around  Pilate  had  for  the  culprit  Jesus.  With 
covetous  looks  they  eyed  him  as  a  choice  vic- 
tim. They  wanted  to  show  their  power,  they 
wanted  to  show  their  piety,  they  wanted  to 
show  their  academic  virtue.  And  those  aca- 
demic laws,  were  they  made  for  the  young  col- 
legians or  the  young  collegians  for  them  .?  The 
executors  of  those  laws,  was  it  designed  that 
their  relation  to  undergraduates  should  be  that 
of  sympathetic  protectors,  of  paternal  guard- 
ians, of  kindly  helpers  .■*  This  act  looked  as 
though,  whatever  was  their  original  design, 
they  were  become  like  self-absorbed  spiders 
that  greedily  spin  and  stretch  their  web  to 
catch  unwary  wanderers. 


SHELLEY.  165 

Here  is  Hogg's  report  of  Shelley's  account 
of  what  happened  : 

"  It  was  a  fine  spring  morning  on  Lady-day, 
in  the  year  181 1,  when  I  went  to  Shelley's 
rooms  ;  he  was  absent ;  but  before  I  had  col- 
lected our  books  he  rushed  in.  He  was  terri- 
bly agitated.  I  anxiously  inquired  what  had 
happened. 

" '  I  am  expelled,'  he  said,  as  soon  as  he  had 
recovered  himself  a  little,  '  I  am  expelled  !  I 
was  sent  for  suddenly  a  few  minutes  ago  ;  I 
went  to  the  common  room,  where  I  found  our 
master,  and  two  or  three  of  the  Fellows.  The 
master  produced  a  copy  of  the  little  syllabus, 
and  asked  me  if  I  were  the  author  of  it.  He 
spoke  in  a  rude,  abrupt,  and  insolent  tone.  I 
begged  to  be  informed  for  what  purpose  he  put 
the  question.  No  answer  was  given  :  but  the 
master  loudly  and  angrily  repeated,  "  Are  you 
the  author  of  this  book  .?  "  If  I  can  j  udge  from 
your  manner,  I  said,  you  are  resolved  to  pun- 
ish me,  if  I  should  acknowledge  that  it  is  my 
work.  If  you  can  prove  that  it  is,  produce 
your  evidence  ;  it  is  neither  just  nor  lawful  to 
interrogate  me  in  such  a  case  and  for  such  a 
purpose.  Such  proceedings  would  become  a 
court  of  inquisitors,  but  not  free  men  in  a  free 


1 66  SHELLEY. 

country.  "  Do  you  choose  to  deny  that  this 
is  your  composition  ?  "  the  master  reiterated 
in  the  same  rude  and  angry  voice.'  Shelley 
comi^lained  much  of  his  violent  and  ungentle- 
manlike  deportment,  saying,  '  I  have  experi- 
enced tyranny  and  injustice  before,  and  I  well 
know  what  vulgar  violence  is ;  but  I  never  met 
with  such  unworthy  treatment.  I  told  him 
calmly,  but  firmly,  that  I  was  determined  not 
to  answer  any  questions  respecting  the  publi- 
cation on  the  table.  He  immediately  repeated 
his  demand  ;  I  persisted  in  my  refusal ;  and 
he  said  furiously, "  Then  you  are  expelled  ;  and 
I  desire  you  will  quit  the  college  early  to-mor- 
row morning  at  the  latest."  One  of  the  Fel- 
lows took  up  two  papers,  and  handed  one  of 
them  to  me  ;  here  it  is.'  " 

And  this  young  member  of  University  Col- 
lege, who  had  still  three  years  to  grow  before 
entering  legal  manhood,  against  whom,  with- 
out premonition,  was  thus  suddenly  hurled 
this  thunder-bolt  of  academic  power,  what 
were  his  qualities,  his  inward  dispositions  .'* 
His  daily  companion  and  friend,  T.  J.  Hogg, 
describes  Shelley  as  he  impressed  him  at  Ox- 
ford and  afterwards,  and  his  description  is  con- 
firmed by  some  of  the  highest  and  best  men 


SHELLEY.  167 

who  knew  Shelley  during  the  latter  years  of 
his  short  life.  The  following  are  a  few  of  the 
briefest  sentences  taken  from  a  number  of 
similar  purport  found  in  the  pages  of  Hogg's 
Life  of  Shelley. 

"  His  speculations  were  as  wild  as  the  ex- 
perience of  twenty-one  years  has  shown  them 
to  be  ;  but  the  zealous  earnestness  for  the 
augmentation  of  knowledge,  and  the  glowing 
philanthropy  and  boundless  benevolence  that 
marked  them,  and  beamed  forth  in  the  whole 
deportment  of  that  extraordinary  boy,  are  not 
less  astonishing  than  they  would  have  been 
if  the  whole  of  his  glorious  anticipations  had 
been  prophetic ;  for  these  high  qualities,  at 
least,  I  have  never  found  a  parallel." 

"  In  no  individual,  perhaps,  was  the  moral 
sense  ever  more  completely  developed  than  in 
Shelley  ;  in  no  being  was  the  perception  of 
right  and  of  wrong  more  acute." 

"  As  his  love  of  intellectual  pursuits  was 
vehement,  and  the  vigor  of  his  genius  almost 
celestial,  so  were  the  purity  and  sanctity  of 
his  life  most  conspicuous." 

"  I  never  knew  any  one  so  prone  to  admire 
as  he  was,  in  whom  the  principle  of  veneration 
was  so  strong." 


1 68  SHELLEY. 

"  I  have  had  the  happiness  to  associate  with 
some  of  the  best  specimens  of  gentlemen  ; 
but  with  all  due  deference  for  those  admirable 
persons  (may  my  candor  and  my  preference 
be  pardoned),  I  can  affirm  that  Shelley  was  al- 
most the  only  example  I  have  yet  found  that 
was  never  wanting,  even  in  the  most  minute 
particular,  of  the  infinite  and  various  observ- 
ances of  pure,  entire,  and  perfect  gentility." 


III. 

To  the  upright,  affectionate,  sensitive  young 
poet  the  decree  of  expulsion  from  Oxford  was 
a  heavy  blow.  Its  first  effect  was  to  incense 
against  him  his  father,  who  forbade  his  return 
to  Field  Place.  It  broke  off  finally  his  engage- 
ment to  Harriet  Grove  ;  it  arrested  his  studi- 
ous reading,  which  the  quiet  of  Oxford  favored  ; 
it  put  a  brand  upon  his  name  in  the  world. 
Showered  as  arrows  from  the  deadly  quiver  of 
angered  Apollo  fell  suddenly  upon  him  the 
shafts  of  adversity.  Did  he  quail,  did  he  suc- 
cumb ?  Can  a  hurricane  blow  out  the  flame 
of  .^tna  .-*  The  flame  bends,  writhes  before  it. 
As  for  Shelley,  neither  his  purposes  nor  his 
outward  being  yielded  a  jot  to  this  concen- 
trated storm.  In  the  depths  of  his  being  was 
a  fire  too  strong  and  too  pure  that  the  flame  of 
his  life  should  even  waver  before  the  blast  of 
circumstances.  A  deep  glowing  soul  kept  his 
gait  as  upright  and  steady  as  itself.  Only  in 
his  love  was  he  stricken.  He  loved  Harriet 
Grove.     That  she  should  give  him  up  wounded 


I/O  SHELLEY. 

him  sorely.  Deep  compassion,  cheered  by 
deeper  admiration,  holds  us  as  we  call  up  the 
image  of  this  boy-man,  alone  in  multitudinous 
London  in  the  summer  of  1811,  not  yet  nine- 
teen, with  his  tall,  slight  figure  and  radiant 
countenance,  a  refined,  courteous,  tender  gen- 
tleman, suddenly  bereft  of  all  those  outward 
supports  so  needful  to  a  youth  just  passing 
into  manhood,  —  paternal  aid  and  protection, 
family  sympathy,  favor  of  elders,  good-will  of 
friends,  —  all  suddenly  snatched  from  him,  and 
he  standing  erect,  uncrushed,  unbowed,  undis- 
mayed. 

By  an  image  so  imposing,  one's  thought  is 
called  off  from  what  the  name  of  Shelley 
brings,  before  us,  his  poetry  with  its  inex- 
haustible imaginations,  its  aerial  flights,  its  mu- 
sical reverberations  out  of  the  unknown,  its 
sparkling  draughts  from  the  fountains  of  nat- 
ure,—  from  all  this  we  are  called  to  gaze  with 
a  new  admiration  at  the  steadfast  manliness, 
the  moral  courage,  the  stoical  fortitude,  of  a 
youthful  figure,  wrenched  in  a  moment  from 
its  dearest  social  ties,  loosed  from  all  its  sweet 
dependencies. 

But  to  a  great  soul  what  are  the  world's 
animosities  .-'     They  are  what  to  the  rising  sun 


SHELLEY.  171 

is  the  darkness  of  a  stormy  night.  To  the 
risen  sun  the  darkness  has  ceased  to  be.  To 
the  young  Shelley,  strong  and  truthful,  when 
he  asserted  himself,  outward  adversities  were 
not. 

Among  other  hostilities,  his  father  had 
stopped  his  allowance.  It  is  said  (and  the 
statement  is  readily  credible,  so  in  accord  is 
it  with  the  generous  spirit  of  Shelley's  whole 
life)  that  at  this  time  he  pawned  his  solar  mi- 
croscope, a  pet  instrument;  in  order  to  relieve 
a  case  of  distress.  In  his  first  disgrace,  his 
sisters  sent  him  their  pocket-money.  But  the 
stoppage  of  the  allowance  did  not  last  long. 
His  father  soon  relaxed  and  had  him  at  Field 
Place,  when  an  arrangement  was  made  where- 
by he  was  allowed  two  hundred  pounds  a  year. 

Shelley's  bearing  toward  his  father  was  not 
always  what  it  should  have  been.  In  the  way 
he  sometimes  spoke  to  him  and  of  him  there 
was  a  want  of  filial  propriety.  Through  the 
Shelleys  the  paternal  stream  did  not  flow  clear 
and  steady ;  it  was  liable  to  obstructions  and 
eddies  and  turbid  eruptions.  Sir  Bysshe,  we 
have  seen,  would  damn  his  son  Timothy  to  his 
face,  and  though  his  son  did  not  repay  him  in 
verbal  coin  of  the  same  mintage,  his  affection 


1/2  SHELLEY. 

and  respect  could  not  be  expected  to  maintain 
themselves  at  due  filial  heat.  Timothy,  on  his 
part,  could  not  understand  his  son  Percy ;  for 
that  he  should  not  be  blamed.  Many  men, 
with  far  more  insight  and  culture  than  he, 
have  failed  to  understand  Shelley.  Fully  to 
appreciate  him  is  needed  a  healthy,  genuinely 
Christian  sympathy,  allied  to  poetic  insight. 
The  father's  obtuseness  led  to  arbitrary  or  ir- 
ritating acts.  Percy  was  certainly  as  right 
not  to  heed  the  pate'rnal  advice  to  get  himself 
converted  to  the  Timothean  type  of  Christian- 
ity by  reading  Paley's  Evidences,  as  he  was  to 
disregard  the  hint  in  the  matter  of  illegitimate 
children. 

And  now  came  an  event  which  assuredly 
would  not  have  come  so  soon,  nor  in  the  form 
it  did  come  in,  but  for  the  dislocation  of  Shel- 
ley's life  through  his  expulsion  from  Oxford, 
and  the  consequent  frowns  of  friends  and  rela- 
tives, the  alienation  of  Harriet  Grove,  the  dis- 
satisfaction of  his  father  :  I  mean  his  marriage. 

Among  the  schoolmates  of  his  sisters  was 
Harriet  Westbrook,  the  daughter  of  a  re- 
tired London  innkeeper.  Harriet  was  very 
pretty,  with  a  slight  figure,  a  sunny  counte- 
nance, and  beautiful  hair.     She  was  the  me- 


SHELLEY.  173 

dium  through  whom  his  sisters  conveyed  to 
Shelley  the  savings  from  their  pocket-money. 
One  day  Harriet,  accompanied  by  a  much 
older  sister,  came  to  his  lodgings  to  bring 
this  little  treasure.  He  had  seen  Harriet 
before.  Her  name  was  that  of  his  first  love. 
She  too  was  lovely,  not  without  accomplish- 
ment. Shelley's  heart  was  still  warm  with 
the  passion  for  his  cousin.  He  was  a  general 
lover  of  women.  His  ideal  of  woman  was 
high,  drawn  out  of  his  own  rich,  pure  heart. 
To  him  the  companionship  of  woman  was  a 
deep  need.  To  a  young  poet's  imagination 
behind  beauty  lie  all  other  perfections. 

Shelley  now  visited  Harriet  at  her  father's 
house.  Such  a  visitor  had  never  passed  that 
threshold  before  :  a  young  man  of  rare  per- 
sonal attractions,  and  heir  to  a  rich  baronetcy. 
The  father  and  elder  sister  would  not  fail  to 
encourage  his  visits.  Harriet  had  an  illness 
which  kept  her  some  time  at  home.  Shelley 
escorted  her  back  to  school.  She  complained 
to  him  of  bad  treatment  at  home.  This  of  it- 
self was  enough  to  blow  into  a  matrimonial 
blaze  the  delicate  flame  already  kindled  in 
Shelley's  heart.  He  was  a  man  to  marry  a 
lovely  woman  purely  out  of  pity. 


174  SHELLEY. 

It  was  for  both  a  misfortune,  —  the  union 
of  these  two.  They  were  paired,  not  mated. 
Harriet  had  all  the  qualities  to  have  suitably- 
filled  the  place  of  wife  to  a  commonplace,  re- 
spectable citizen.  For  a  fervent,  aspiring,  in- 
tellectual poet  she  was  unsuited.  Shelley,  with 
his  ardor  and  earnestness,  his  imaginative  dis- 
course, his  air  and  bearing  of  refined  gentle- 
manhood,  his  seraphic  beauty  of  countenance, 
was  irresistible  to  women.  Even  with  Har- 
riet's love  for  him,  their  marriage  might  be 
called  superficial,  not  molded  out  of  solid  sen- 
timent, not  grown  out  of  hearty  sources.  A 
very  pretty,  pleasing  young  woman,  whose  fam- 
ily worked  to  bring  about  a  match  with  a  splen- 
didly-gifted young  man  of  great  worldly  ex- 
pectations. This  is  not  rightly  worded  —  it 
should  be,  a  match  between  a  boy  and  a  girl, 
for  at  the  time  of  their  elopement,  about  the 
beginning  of  September,  1811,  Shelley  was 
nineteen,  Harriet  sixteen.  They  went  straight 
to  Edinburgh,  where  they  were  married  ac- 
cording to  the  forms  of  the  Scottish  law. 

The  letters  of  Shelley  to  his  friend  Hogg 
(who  was  studying  law  at  York)  during  the 
summer  of  181 1,  before  the  elopement,  have 
great  biographical  value.     They  show  the  in- 


SHELLEY.  175 

genuousness  and  nobility  of  Shelley,  his  chival- 
rous nature,  how  easily  he  could  throw  him 
unselfishly  out  of  himself,  and  they  also  show 
that  Harriet  threw  herself  upon  his  protection. 

Moving  about  with  his  bride  and  her  sister 
Eliza  (who  had  fastened  herself  upon  them), 
Shelley  found  himself,  in  the  autumn,  at  Kes- 
wick. Here  a  friendly  relation,  if  not  intima- 
cy, grew  up  between  him  and  Southey.  Even 
this  could  not  have  endured,  the  two  being  of 
opposite,  not  to  say  hostile,  types.  Southey 
looked  more  to  institutions  than  to  the  ideas 
and  principles  that  underlie  them.  Shelley 
struck  right  for  the  heart  of  a  subject,  its  or- 
igin and  cause  of  being.  His  own  soul  was 
so  large  and  vivid  that  it  ever  sought  the  soul 
of  things.  He  did  not  go  too  much  for  princi- 
ples, —  that  no  one  can,  —  but  he  did  not,  even 
later,  jaut  their  due  value  upon  institutions. 
In  comparison  with  the  n^ind  of  Shelley  that 
of  Southey  was  shallow. 

At  Oxford,  and  even  earlier,  at  Eton,  Shel- 
ley indulged  himself  in  opening  epistolary  cor- 
respondence with  ahy  one,  though  a  stranger 
to  him,  whose  book  or  verses  pleased  him. 
Under  this  impulse  he  wrote  to  Felicia  Browne, 
afterwards  Mrs.  Hemans,  who  did  not  encour- 


176  SHELLEY. 

age  the  interchange  of  letters.  In  this  way 
he  first  became  acquainted  with  Leigh  Hunt. 
He  greatly  admired  Godwin's  Political  Jiis- 
tice,  and  while  at  Keswick  he  began  with  its 
author  a  correspondence  which  led  to  moment- 
ous consequences. 

When  Shelley  visited  the  Lake  region  he 
saw  Wordsworth,  but  Coleridge  was  absent. 
This  was  unfortunate,  and  Coleridge  himself 
regretted  it,  thinking  that  he  might  have  been 
of  service  to  the  young  metaphysical  poet. 
Shelley  longed  for  what  he  seldom  got,  — ^^  sym- 
pathy. Southey's  nature  was  too  shallow  and 
too  unlike  that  of  Shelley  to  have  sympathy 
with  him,  and  Wordsworth  was  not  generous 
enough  to  give  him  much.  Coleridge  would 
have  felt  with  him  and  for  him,  and  this  would 
have  so  affected  Shelley  that  it  might  have 
been  a  most  salutary  influence.  Like  all  gen- 
uine poets,  Shelley  cut  his  own  track,  but  he 
was  just  the  man  to  have  received  great  fur- 
therance in  the  cutting  from  the  brotherly  en- 
couragement and  the  utterances,  at  once  cor- 
dial and  preeminently  intellectual,  of  so  supe- 
rior a  man.  Personal  intimacy  with  Coleridge 
would  have  steadied  his  purposes.  Through 
direct,  kindly  intercourse  Coleridge  would  have 


SHELLEY.  lyy 

won  his  confidence,  as  Godwin  did  through  the 
indirect  intercourse  of  letters. 

A  distinction  of  Shelley  it  is,  that  more  than 
almost  any  man  of  whom  "we  have  record, 
whether  philanthropist  or  martyr,  he  lived  out 
of  himself,  serving  or  striving  to  serve  others. 
A  noble,  a  celestial  distinction  is  this.  The 
dominant  desire  of  his  heart  was  to  help  his 
neighbors,  all  men.  This  gives  to  certain  pe- 
riods of  his  life  a  Utopian  air.  The  practical 
progeny  of  marriage  between  a  large  generous 
heart  and  the  poetic  imagination  of  an  impul- 
sive youth  of  twenty  would  not  have  much 
bone  and  muscle. 

From  Keswick  Shelley  betook  him  to  Ire- 
land, with  the  intent  of  obtaining  for  the  Irish 
more  political  justice  than  they  had  yet  en- 
joyed. He  wrote,  printed,  and  circulated  an 
Address  to  the  Irish  people.  As  one  means  of 
circulation  he  threw  copies  of  the  Address  out 
of  his  hotel  window.  Walking  out  he  would 
thrust  one  into  the  hand  of  any  passer  whose 
visage  gave  promise  of  sound  political  senti- 
ment. One  day  he  convulsed  Harriet  with 
laughter  by  poking  one  into  the  hood  of  a  lady. 
All  this  was  easy  to  an  enthusiastic  youth. 
But  had   the  Address  the  flightiness  and  im 


178  SHELLEY. 

practicability  of  a  crude,  Quixotic  brain  ?  Far 
from  it.  Its  chief  stress  was  on  Catholic  eman- 
cipation and  dissolution  of  the  Legislative 
union  with  England.  Catholic  emancipation, 
after  a  long  struggle,  has  since  been  achieved. 
Thirty  years  after  Shelley,  O'Connell  turned  a 
pretty  penny  (from  six  to  ten  thousand  pounds 
a  year)  by  ringing  the  changes  on  legislative 
disunion,  and  this  is  now  the  demand  of  the 
Home  Rulers.  Shelley  also  spoke  (eloquently, 
it  was  said)  at  public  meetings,  once  in  the 
presence  of  O'Connell  and  other  magnates. 
The  methods  he  recommended  in  his  Address 
and  speeches  were  peaceful,  not  violent.  In 
Shelley  there  was  no  bloodthirstiness. 

In  early  spring  he  recrossed  the  Irish  Chan- 
nel and  took  a  house  at  Tanyrallt  in  Carnar- 
vonshire. While  there  an  unusually  high  tide 
broke  an  embankment,  threatening  loss  and 
danger  to  many  cottagers.-  Shelley  took  the 
matter  up  with  his  love-driven  vigor,  went 
about  to  solicit  subscriptions  (a  hateful  duty 
to  one  of  his  spirit),  heading  the  list  with  five 
hundred  pounds.  Owing  to  his  promptness 
and  energy  and  liberality  the  embankment 
was  saved.  At  this  time  Shelley's  yearly  in- 
come was  four  hundred  pounds,  his  father  al- 


SHELLEY.  179 

lowing  him  two  hundred  pounds,  and  Harriet's 
father  the  same  amount  to  her. 

If  on  similar  occasions  every  man  in  a  com- 
munity gave  a  year's  income,  the  consequences 
would  be  disastrous,  and  soon  there  would  be 
no  incomes  to  give.  The  watchful  activity  of 
the  cumulative  impulse  is  a  primary  element 
of  individual,  and  therefore  of  general,  welfare, 
and  there  is  no  more  likelihood  of  an  over- 
whelming current  setting  in  against  this  con- 
servative principle  than  there  is  that  children 
playing  round  their  home  should  with  their 
little  fingers  push  out  its  stone  foundations. 
But,  for  the  higher  well-being  of  communities, 
equally  indispensable  are  self-forgetfulness  and 
self-sacrifice.  Gold-capital,  important  as  it  is, 
is  less  important  than  spiritual  capital.  With- 
out money  danger  from  the  breach  of  the  em- 
bankment would  not  have  been  warded  off ; 
but  in  the  impulse  to  head  the  subscription 
with  five  hundred  pounds  was  a  spiritual  power 
that  gave  life  to  the  whole  enterprise.  The 
giving  of  such  a  sum  by  Shelley  was  a  splen- 
did, an  angelic,  extravagance.  Those  who  pos- 
sess so  much  spiritual  capital  that  they  can 
freely  commit  such  extravagances  are  heav- 
enly lights  that  illuminate  the  earth.  Among 
the  courtiers  and  attendants  of  Queen  Eliza- 


l80  SHELLEY. 

beth  only  Raleigh  felt  and  acted  on  the  impulse 
to  throw  down  his  cloak.  Much  greater  occa- 
sions there  are,  calling  for  infinitely  deeper 
self-sacrifice,  when  it  is  immortally  becoming 
in  a  man  to  throw  down,  not  his  cloak  that  a 
Queen  may  step  on  it  dry-shod,  but  his  body 
that  cottagers  may  step  on  it.  At  rare  mo- 
ments of  sympathetic  elevation  one  feels  as  if 
upon  one's  self  weighed  the  burden  of  human 
misery.  You  seem  responsible  for  every  case 
of  suffering  you  meet ;  you  are  ashamed  of 
your  own  prosperity.  To  Shelley  such  mo- 
ments were  not  rare.  The  feeling  of  unifica- 
tion with  all  mankind  pressed  upon  him  daily. 
More  than  once  he  arrived  at  the  coach-office 
at  Great  Marlow  without  money  to  pay  his 
fare,  having  given  all  he  had  about  him  to 
poor  petitioners  on  the  road  between  his  house 
and  the  office,  and  thus  had  to  go  on  foot  to 
town.  He  one  day  entered  the  grounds  of  his 
neighbor,  Mr.  Maddocks,  without  shoes,  hav- 
ing just  given  his  to  a  poor  woman. 

At  the  sentence  of  fine  and  imprisonment 
against  John  and  Leigh  Hunt  for  a  libel  on 
the  Prince  Regent,  "he  boiled  with  indigna- 
tion," and  offered  one  hundred  pounds  towards 
the  support  of  the  Hunts  in  prison,  and  twenty- 
five  pounds  towards  paying  the  fine. 


IV. 

Society,  as  an  organic  institution  with  spir- 
itual roots,  suffers,  of  course,  from  violations  of 
its  laws.  On  their  observance  its  well-being 
depends.  In  the  social  organization  marriage 
is  a  primordial  constituent,  its  inviolability  im- 
perative. In  the  manful  upward  swing  which 
throughout  Christendom  has  been  made  in  the 
past  fifty  years  towards  larger  liberty,  much 
has  been  thought  and  said  and  written  about 
freedom  in  love.  A  relaxation  of  the  laws 
and  usages  that  now  predominate  over  the  re- 
lations between  the  sexes  would  lead,  not  to 
more  freedom  in  love,  but  to  more  license  in 
lust.  Even  the  most  advanced  civilized  com- 
munities could  not  yet  bear  any  loosening  of 
the  marital  bonds  that  have  been  self-imposed 
for  the  common  security.  The  profound  Fou- 
rier showed  his  farsightedness  nowhere  more 
clearly  than  when  he  declared  that  freedom  in 
love  would  be  the  last  freedom  achieved,  and 
that  only  when,  through  the  practical  applica- 
tion of  his  great  discovery  of  the  law  of  work 


1 82  SHELLEY. 

by  groups  and  series,  and  the  consequent  lib- 
eration of  men  from  most  of  the  oppressions 
and  abuses  and  perversions  and  corruptions 
that  now  afflict  and  enslave  them,  only  then 
would  they  have  become  enough  purified  to  be 
entitled,  and  able,  to  enjoy  freedom  in  love. 

In  our  present  social  organization  this  free- 
dom would  not  be  a  means  to  such  purification, 
but  the  reverse,  and,  instead  of  liberating  any- 
body, would  surely  lead  to  a  heavier  enthrall- 
ment  and  degradation  of  that  sex  upon  whose 
virtue  chiefly  depends  the  health  and  beauty 
of  the  human  race,  its  physical  as  well  as  its 
moral  health  and  beauty. 

Than  Shelley  no  man  had  a  purer  love  and 
higher  respect  for  woman.  In  him  this  love 
sought  a  full  union,  by  means  of  all  the  facul- 
ties, between  two  beings  of  different  sexes,  not 
a  partial  gratification,  the  full  union  involving 
subjection  to  the  moral  and  spiritual  law,  par- 
tial gratification  involving  the  demoralizing 
breach  of  that  law.  But  Shelley,  from  the 
very  purity  of  his  feelings,  as  well  as  from  the 
impetuosity  of  his  nature,  was  prone  to  act  out 
hastily  his  desires  and  conceptions.  Amid  so 
much  that  is  false  and  foul  he  was  true  and 
sweet,  and  so  true  that  he  was  incorruptible. 


SHELLEY.  183 

He  longed  to  admire,  and  to  be  lifted  by  ad- 
miration. His  so  early  enjoyment  of  Plato 
showed  what  depths  of  good  were  in  him.  He 
sought  for  men  whom  he  could  love  and  rever- 
ence, and  he  was  almost  too  ready  to  love  and 
reverence  a  lovely  woman.  To  a  young  poet 
outward  loveliness  implies  inward  loveliness. 

Harriet  Westbrook  was  lovely  to  look  at, 
nor  have  we  evidence  that  she  was  inwardly 
unlovely  ;  but  she  was  made  of  common  opaque 
clay,  while  Shelley's  clay  was  luminous  with 
glintings  of  gold.  Between  the  two  there  was 
an  inherent  fatal  unfitness.  This  unfitness 
might  have  been,  for  some  time  longer  at 
least,  smoothed  down  by  a  sense  of  duty  on 
his  part  and  by  pliancy  on  hers,  but  for  Eliza. 
Eliza  Westbrook  was,  by  a  dozen  years  or 
more,  the  elder  sister  of  Harriet,  one  of  those 
prosaic,  persistent,  self-sufficient  persons,  ter- 
rible in  a  household,  whose  diabolic  function 
it  is  to  deaden  the  native  glow,  to  stay  the 
streams,  of  life  in  those  near  them,  by  fear- 
lessly taking  upon  themselves  the  direction  of 
other  people's  vital  currents.  To  her  Harriet 
was  still  but  a  child  in  years,  and,  from  Eliza's 
autocratic  bent,  had  doubtless  always  been 
subordinate  to  her.     Moreover,  Eliza  had  done 


1 84  SHELLEY. 

her  part  to  secure  "  so  brilliant  a  match  "  for 
Harriet,  and  possibly  would  exaggerate  that 
part  and  assume  upon  the  exaggeration.  Her 
presence  was  thus  a  misfortune  to  the  young 
married  couple.  She  was  a  prickly  burr  that 
stuck  to  them,  and,  at  the  same  time,  a  wedge 
that  was  daily  splitting  them  further  asunder. 

To  Harriet  Shelley  dedicated  Queen  Mab, 
his  first  long  poem,  written  when  he  had  hardly 
reached  legal  manhood.  Was  the  dedication, 
as  well  as  the  poem,  in  his  mind  when,  nearly 
ten  years  later,  in  1821,  on  the  occasion  of  a 
piratical  edition  of  Queen  Mab,  he  wrote  this 
protest :  "  I  doubt  not  but  that  it  is  perfectly 
worthless  in  point  of  literary  composition ;  and 
that  in  all  that  concerns  moral  and  political 
speculation,  as  well  as  in  the  subtler  discrim- 
inations of  metaphysical  and  religious  doctrine, 
it  is  still  more  crude  and  immature.  I  am  a 
devoted  enemy  to  religious,  political,  and  do- 
mestic oppression  ;  and  I  regret  this  publica- 
tion, not  so  much  from  literary  vanity  as  be- 
cause I  fear  it  is  better  fitted  to  injure  than  to 
serve  the.  sacred  cause  of  freedom." 

If,  instead  of  being  rudely  expelled  from  Ox- 
ford, Shelley  had  been  treated  there  with  pa- 
ternal dutifulncss,  with  Christian  kindness,  it 


SHELLEY.  185 

may   be   doubted   whether  Queen  Mab  would 
ever  have  been  written.     This  promising,  but 
juvenile  and  crude,  performance  was  probably 
a  bravado  thrown  by  a  defiant  athlete  into  the 
teeth  of  hoary  Oxford,  —  a  bravado  tempered 
by  rhythmic  verse,  but  flanked  by  very  out- 
spoken prose  in  the  shape  of  long,  elaborate, 
heterodox  notes,  —  notes  which  seventy  years 
ago,  in  the  then  tory-and-bishop-ridden,  unfa- 
miliar England,  looked  dark,  minatory,  danger- 
ous, diabolical,  damnable.    To  the  present  gen- 
eration, happily  more   familiar  with  heretical 
freedom  and  the  deeps  of  thought,  far  more  dis- 
enthralled intellectually  and  spiritually,  these 
notes  wear  a  very  neutral  tint,  seem  threaten- 
ing only  to  timid  theological  laggards,  are  dan- 
gerous to  nobody,  their  diabolism  having  faded 
before  that  sun  of  common  sense  which  has 
transformed  the  fearful  hoofs  and  tail  of  Satan 
into  materials  of  fun  in  comic  wood-cuts. 

White  horses  are  harder  to  match  than 
black  :  the  purer  the  color,  the  more  apparent 
and  discordant  are  the  differences  when  paired. 
Poets,  from  their  deeper  and  warmer  sensibil- 
ities, which  empower  them  to  be  spokesmen  of 
humanity,  are  harder  to  mate  than  other  men, 
and  suffer  more  from  mismating.     Of  Shelley's 


l86  SHELLEY. 

great  contemporary  peers,  one,  Keats,  died 
single;  only  one,  Wordsworth,  was  happily 
married  ;  Coleridge  lived  the  last  twenty  years 
of  his  life  parted  from  his  wife  ;  Byron's  wife 
deserted  him.  The  desertion  of  a  husband  by 
his  wife  has  by  no  means  so  bad  a  look  as  the 
desertion  of  a  wife  by  her  husband,  man,  by 
his  resources  and  position,  being  better  able  to 
take  care  of  himself,  and  enjoying  the  honora- 
ble privilege  of  being  protector  to  woman. 

Documents  are  said  to  exist  which  relieve 
Shelley  from  the  burden  of  blame  for  quitting 
Harriet.  Probably  by  mutual  agreement  they 
separated.  But  forty  days  after  parting  with 
Harriet,  Shelley,  on  the  28th  of  August,  18 14, 
set  out  from  London  for  Switzerland  with 
Mary.  Shelley  had  somewhat  revolutionary 
theories  together  with  a  will  and  courage  to 
put  them  into  action,  —  theories  which  he 
partly  outgrew  even  before  the  end  of  his 
short  life.  He  was  infatuated  with  the  God- 
wins, he  had  never  loved  Harriet  with  his 
whole  soul,  he  did  so  love  Mary,  who  loved 
him  deeply,  and  was  cajDable  of  sympathizing 
with  his  highest  moods,  was  a  pure-minded, 
high-soulcd  girl,  who,  as  the  daughter  of  Mary 
Wollstonecraft  and  William    Godwin,  felt  no 


SHELLEY.  I'^'J 

need  of  priestly  consecration  to  sanctify  her 
union  witii  the  man  she  loved.  She  proved 
herself  a  good  hearty  wife  to  Shelley,  worthy 
of  so  great  a  husband ;  and  he  valued  and 
cherished  her  to  the  end.  Another  mismat- 
ing  might  have  destroyed  him.  As  to  Shel- 
ley's eccentric  proceedings  with  these  two 
young  beauties  (Mary  was  only  seventeen),  it 
should  be  borne  in  mind  that  he  was  young, 
very  young,  and  that  to  youth  certain  indul- 
gences are  allowed.  Shelley  had  no  carnal 
wild  oats  to  sow ;  he  was  now  sowing  his 
spiritual  wild  oats. 

Their  bridal  tour  was  as  eccentric  as  their 
wedding.  Unlike  similar  excursions,  it  was 
planned  and  carried  out  with  severe  economy. 
They  started  to  walk  through  France,  with  a 
mule  to  carry  their  luggage,  but  Shelley  hav- 
ing sprained  his  ankle,  they  had  to  provide 
themselves  with  a  cheap  open  vehicle.  In 
Switzerland  they  passed  some  weeks,  and  then 
coming  down  the  Rhine  to  Cologne  in  a  boat, 
they  returned  to  England  in  September,  1814, 
spending  their  last  guinea  to  pay  the  passage 
from  Holland. 

It  was  after  this  trip  that  Shelley  wrote 
Alasior,   or   the    Spirit  of   Solitude.     Alas  tot 


1 88  SHELLEY, 

is  the  first  poem  of  any  length  published  by 
Shelley  ;  for  Queen  Mab  was  not  published, 
but  only  printed  for  private  circulation.  Alas- 
tor  shows  sure  advance  in  literary  skill,  being 
written  in  rapid,  musical  blank  verse.  Nor 
does  it  attempt  to  solve  problems  insoluble  by 
a  young  man,  or  even  by  ripest  age.  A  las  tor 
is  entirely  subjective.  Shelley  delighted  in 
wandering;  he  never  set  up  household  gods 
fixedly  anywhere,  Alastor  is  a  young  poet, 
"  a  lovely  youth,"  who  early  left  his  "  alienated 
home  "  to  seek  strange  truths  in  undiscovered 
lands, 

"  Gentle,  and  brave,  and  generous,  —  no  lorn  bard 
Breathed  o'er  his  dark  fate  one  melodious  sigh  : 
He  lived,  he  died,  he  sung,  in  solitude. 
Strangers  have  wept  to  hear  his  passionate  notes. 
And  virgins,  as  unknown  he  past,  have  pined 
And  wasted  for  fond  love  of  his  wild  eyes. 
The  fire  of  those  soft  orbs  has  ceased  to  burn. 
And  Silence,  too  enamored  of  that  voice, 
Locks  its  mute  music  in  her  rugged  cell." 

He  starts  on  his  travel,  scattering  pearls  of 
poetry  along  his  path.  Shelley  makes  him 
pass  through  Greece,  and  Egypt,  and  Pales- 
tine, and  Arabia,  and  Persia,  and  India  ;  he 

"  In  joy  and  exultatiem  held  his  way  ; 
Till  in  the  vale  of  Cashmire,  far  witliin 
Its  loneliest  dell,  where  odorous  plants  entwine 


SHELLEY.  ,  189 

Beneath  the  hollow  rocks  a  natural  bower, 
Beside  a  sparkling  rivulet  he  stretched 
His  languid  limbs.     A  vision  on  his  sleep 
There  came,  a  dream  of  hopes  that  never  yet 
Had  flushed  his  cheek.     He  dreamed  a  veiled  maid 
Sate  near  him,  talking  in  low,  solemn  tones." 

To  tell  dreams  is  proverbially  a  bore,  and 
that  the  relation  of  this  one  is  the  opposite  of 
that  proves  again  how  in  Art  everything  is  in 
execution.  The  sleeping  poet  has  his  first  love 
in  a  dream,  and  (the  old  dream-story)  just  as 
he  is  about  to  clasp  in  his  arms  the  incompara- 
ble maiden,  she  dissolves  and  the  shock  wakes 
him.  All  the  beautiful  sights  and  sounds  of 
the  visionary  scene  suddenly  non-existent,  on 
what  his  waking  eyes  behold  he  gazes  as  va- 
cantly 

"As  Ocean's  moon  looks  on  the  moon  in  Heaven," 

that  lovely  form  forever  lost 

"  In  the  wide,  pathless  desert  of  dim  sleep." 

And  now,  frantic  with  anguish,  driven  by 
the  memory  of  that  dream,  he  ranges  again 
through  vast  spaces,  the  poet  depicting  with 
poetic  vivacity  mountain  and  gorge  and  river 
and  lake  and  forest  and  cavern.  Take  this  as 
a  sample  of  the  jewels  wherewith  the  narrative 
is  brightened  ;  he  is  describing  the  parasites 


190  SHELLEY. 

"  Starred   with   ten   thousand    blossoms,"   that 
clasp  the  gray  bark  of  a  double-trunkcd  tree  : 

"  And,  as  gamesome  infants'  eyes, 
With  gentle  meanings,  and  most  innocent  wiles. 
Fold  their  beams  round  the  hearts  of  those  that  love, 
These  twine  their  tendrils  with  the  wedded  boughs 
Uniting  their  close  union." 

At  last,  weak  and  worn,  he  reaches  a  green 
recess  where  human  foot  had  never  pressed. 
There  he  lies  down,  and,  faintly  smiling, 
breathes  his  last.  The  moral  to  be  drawn 
ixQx^  Alastor  —  amoral  not  then  designed  by 
Shelley  —  is,  that  it  is  idle  to  hope  to  realize 
on  earth  a  poet's  ideal. 

Shelley's  passion  was  for  the  beautiful,  his 
fervent  desire  was  for  the  perfect  good,  his  de- 
light was  in  nature,  his  rapture  in  nature's 
truth  and  simplicity.  He  was  ever  pouring 
forth  admiration,  laden  with  longing  for  the 
better,  ever  "  panting  for  the  music  which  is 
divine."  Hence  his  lyrical  splendor*  and  his 
lyrical  abundance.  His  brain  was  an  ever 
heaving  ode  to  beauty  and  freedom  and  love. 
Any  event  or  person  or  object  could  become 
the  vent  for  drawing  from  tliis  deep,  general 
spring  an  individual  stream  of  felicitous  verse. 

Like  other  of  his  early  poems,  and  some  of 


SHELLEY.  191 

the  later,  Alastor  is  haunted  by  the  shadow  of 
death.  One  is  reminded  of  that  great  passage 
in  the  Phado  where  Socrates  declares  that  we 
can  only  reach  that  which  is  the  aim  of  philos- 
ophy, namely,  wisdom,  through  death.  Shelley 
had  a  craving  to  know,  to  get  at  the  essence  of 
being.  Truth,  wisdom,  were  wants  of  his  soul. 
He  had  an  instinct  that  death  would  solve 
mysteries  that  are  insoluble  on  earth.  He  read 
Plato  at  Oxford,  but  before  that  he  longed  for 
intelligence  from  the  world  of  spirits,  as  though 
he  felt  that  they  could  teach  him  profound 
truths.  Those  sentences  of  Socrates  would 
arrest  Shelley  more  intently  than  other  read- 
ers. 

When  in  the  winter  and  spring  of  181 5  he 
was  writing  Alastor  he  believed  that  death  was 
hovering  about  him,  and  that  his  days  here  be- 
low were  numbered.  He  suffered  sharp  inter- 
nal pains.  An  eminent  London  physician  pro- 
nounced him  to  be  in  a  rapid  consumption. 
This  was  a  mistake ;  in  a  year  or  two  these 
pulmonary  symptoms  disappeared.  He  was, 
moreover,  pecuniarily  embarrassed,  and  more 
than  ever  isolated.  All  this  deepened  the  tone 
of  melancholy  which  would  be  natural  to  Shel- 
ley writing  on  the  Spirit  of  Solitude.     Since 


192  SHELLEY. 

his  elopement  with  Mary  the  Godwins  had 
ceased  to  recognize  him,  and  some  other 
friends  fell  off.  But  Shelley  was  a  pure  great 
spirit,  and  therefore  not  to  be  bowed  by  cir- 
cumstances. No  amount  of  outward  pressure 
could  crush  or  bend  that  strong  soul,  with  its 
consciousness  of  rectitude,  its  lofty  indepen- 
dence, its  masterly  force  of  will. 

Early  in  the  year  181 5  occurred  an  event 
which  cannot  but  gladden  the  pulse  of  Shel- 
ley's biographer,  — the  decease  of  a  very  aged 
man,  grandfather  and  godfather  to  the  poet. 
By  the  death  of  Sir  Bysshe  Shelley,  his  son 
Timothy  succeeded  to  the  estates  and  title, 
and  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley  became  heir-at-law 
to  a  rich  baronetcy.  An  arrangement  was 
made  whereby  the  poet  received  one  thousand 
pounds  a  year.  We  venture  to  surmise  that 
had  he  been  a  little  more  skilled  in  worldly 
management,  and  a  little  more  self-seeking,  he 
could  have  secured  a  larger  income.  Still,  an 
annual  sum  of  one  thousand  pounds  sterling 
was  to  a  poet  in  that  day  comparative  wealth. 
A  portion  was  immediately  set  apart  for  Har- 
riet. 

Much,  no  doubt,  of  his  first  year's  income 
was    preengaged    by   incumbrances,    some   of 


SHELLEY.  193 

them  incurred  to  help  other  people.  As  to 
that,  however,  much  of  this  comfortable  pro- 
vision was  preengaged  for  every  year  he  lived  ; 
for  with  Shelley  life  was  not  life  without  giv- 
ing. He  lived  frugally  because  it  is  the  part 
of  a  sound  manly  man  so  to  live,  and  this  wis- 
dom enabled  him  more  freely  to  practice  a  still 
higher  wisdom,  the  wisdom  of  giving.  Shel- 
ley wanted  to  keep  nothing  for  himself  but 
the  inmost  of  himself  —  that,  to  be  sure,  was 
enough  to  keep. 

In  the  spring  of  18 16  the  Shelleys  went 
again  to  the  Continent,  reaching  Geneva  in 
May.  It  happened  that  a  few  days  after  them 
Lord  Byron  arrived  at  the  same  hotel.  Shel- 
ley and  Byron,  who  now  met  for  the  first  time, 
hired  villas  not  far  apart,  sailed  on  the  lake 
together,  and  became  as  intimate  as  two  young 
men  could  be  who  were  so  different,  so  oppo- 
site, in  personal  and  even  in  poetic  qualities, 
but  who  each  admired  the  genius  of  the  other. 

Goethe  said  of  Byron's  Don  yuan,  that  it  is 
too  empirical,  that  is,  too  much  drawn  from 
experience ;  a  just  criticism  which  applies  to 
most  of  what  he  wrote.  In  vain  did  Byron 
protest,  after  the  publication  of  the  first  two 
cantos  of  Childe  Harold,  against  the  inference 
13 


194  SHELLEY. 

of  the  critics  that  Childe  Harold  was  Byron, 
But  Goethe  does  not  mean  merely  that  Byron 
drew  from  personal  experience,  but  that,  be- 
sides, he  depended  too  much  upon  all  kinds  of 
facts  and  incidents.  There  was  too  much  of 
the  actual  and  not  enough  ideality.  In  Beppo, 
Lara,  Conrad,  Childe  Harold,  Don  Juan,  Byron 
embodied  what  was  easiest  to  him,  himself.  It 
was  difficult  for  him  to  get  away  from  the 
self.  Self  played  too  domineering  a  part  in  his 
thoughts  and  life,  and  therefore  in  his  poetry, 
and  not  a  high  self.  In  the  creative  process 
Byron  had  not  enough  of  what  might  be  called 
spiritual  and  moral  momentum  to  project  him 
much  beyond  the  personal  sphere. 

In  poetry  no  poet  can  create  a  character  ex- 
cept out  of  his  own  being  ;  but  that  character 
need  not  be  colored  by  his  own  peculiar  per- 
sonality, and  it  will  not  be  so  colored  if  he  has 
a  large  elevated  nature  and  prodigal  mental 
resources.  Imogen  and  Falstaff,  lago  and 
Cordelia,  came  out  of  Shakespeare's  being,  but 
they  are  not  tainted  with  the  individuality  and 
the  peculiarities  and  vices  of  the  daily  man, 
William  Shakespeare.  In  the  man  Shake- 
speare there  was  no  virus  of  egotism  so  per- 
vasive and  irrepressible  as  to  cloud  the  whole 


SHELLEY.  195 

material  the  poet  handles,  so  that  there  gets 
to  be  a  fatally  visible  likeness  among  his  per- 
sonages, all  running  into  one  another  like  the 
differently-colored  stripes  of  a  badly  dyed  tis- 
sue. The  whole  tissue  of  Byron's  poetic  char- 
acterization is  thus  discolored  and  clouded. 

A  poet's  ideals  may  ascend- beyond  himself, 
but,  of  course,  not  beyond  his  capabilities. 
Sterne  did  not  draw  himself  in  My  Uncle  Toby, 
nor  Cervantes  himself  in  Don  Quixote,  but  in 
these  creations  they  showed  their  genius  for 
high  human  ideals,  and  that  their  personal- 
ity was  not  so  egotistically  predominant  and 
obtrusive  as  to  frustrate  their  attempts  to  em- 
body such  ideals.  Byron  belongs  to  that  nu- 
merous class  of  men,  some  of  them  able  men, 
whose  egoism  withholds  them  from  the  cult- 
ure and  happiness  and  refreshment  of  admi- 
ration. His  admirations,  such  as  they  were, 
were  by  no  means  directed  towards  the  highest 
and  purest,  and  his  egoism  was  predominant. 
Intimacy  with  Shelley  was  here  of  service  to 
him,  for  Shelley  was  not  only  in  mind  and 
character  superior  to  any  of  his  previous  asso- 
ciates, but  he  was  a  living  reality  superior  to 
any  ideal  Byron  had  ever  harbored.. 

If  Byron's  poetic  defect  is  to  fly  too  near 


196  SHELLEY. 

the  earth,  too  close  often  to  its  low  places,  the 
defect  of  Shelley  is  too  much  aptitude  to  soar 
away  from  the  earth  to  wooded  mountain-tops, 
and  through  the  clouds  towards  the  stars.  As 
the  blood  in  Byron's  personages  is  of  a  too 
dark  animal  red,  that  in  some  of  Shelley's 
lacks  the  ruddiness  of  earthly  arteries,  being 
too  transparent  with  celestial  ichor  to  suit 
the  best  artistic  purposes.  His  imagery  is 
at  times  too  unsubstantial  for  the  grasp  of  or- 
dinary perception.  He  delighted  to  float  away 
into  regions  of  ever  shifting  elemental  vicissi- 
tudes and  there  launch  visionary  beings  on 
their  ethereal  careers.  Out  of  his  brain  he 
peopled  the  air.  Or,  is  the  air,  invisible  to 
grosser  senses,  alive  with  sparkling  embryos, 
which  his  spiritual  eye  seized  and  quickened 
into  beautiful  shapes  1  Shelley  is  sidereal. 
His  poetry  is  a  superearthly  canopy  overhang- 
ing us,  glittering  with  the  clear,  pure  twinkle 
of  stars,  and  having  the  beauty  and  signifi- 
cance of  stars,  and  sometimes  their  remoteness. 
Nevertheless,  however  distant  and  aerial  is  his 
range,  humanity  is  ever  present  to  his  heart. 
In  his  verse  we  catch  glimpses  of  a  better, 
happier  future.  For  a  mind  to  busy  itself  lov- 
ingly with  the  future  of  man  is  of  itself  a  high 


SHELLEY.  197 

distinction.  Deep  within  Shelley's  being  lay 
a  humanity  so  rich  that  in  following  the  abun- 
dant outflow  of  his  hopes  and  aspirations  one 
is  swept  towards  luminous  horizons,  glowing 
vistas  as  of  recovered  Paradises.  Shelley's  im- 
aginations were  fed  by  the  divine  influences 
that  unceasingly  replenish  the  pure  soul's  at- 
mosphere. 


V. 

This  summer  of  1816  at  Geneva  was  one  of 
the  happiest  and  fullest  periods  of  Shelley's 
life.  Near  him,  within  view,  was  the  sublim- 
est  of  "Swiss  scenery,  which  he  explored,  and 
his  dwelling  was  on  the  shore  of  the  beauti- 
ful variegated  lake,  which  he  circumnavigated. 
And  he  circumnavigated  it  with  Byron.  The 
tour  in  their  boat  lasted  more  than  a  week. 

Shelley  craved  sympathy  and  congenial 
companionship,  and  seldom  got  either.  This 
was  the  first  time  that  in  his  companion  he 
had  an  equal.  The  company  of  Byron  was  a 
delight  to  him.  He  probably  somewhat  over- 
rated Byron's  performance  in  poetry.  The 
difference  between  Byron's  poetry  and  his 
own  at  first  led  him  to  see  in  it  more  than 
there  was.  Among  Shelley's  blessings  was 
an  incapability  of  envy  and  jealousy.  He  ad- 
rriired  Byron's  verse  and  enjoyed  exchanging 
thoughts  with  him.  In  their  talk  together, 
Shelley  gave  more  than  he  received,  for  his 
mind  took  in  principles  more  readily  than  By- 


SHELLEY.  199 

ron's,  and  principles  of  a  higher  sweep.  Shel- 
ley, though  now  only  in  his  twenty-fourth 
year,  had  been  already  drawn  to  and  had  en- 
joyed Plato.  Byron,  four  years  older,  could  at 
no  age  have  enjoyed  Plato.  But  he  enjoyed 
Shelley,  and  after  an  intimacy  of  six  years,  of 
which  this  was  the  beginning,  he  admired  and 
esteemed  him  more  than  any  man  he  had  ever 
known. 

The  purity  and  disinterestedness  of  Shel- 
ley's nature  made  him  peculiarly  accessible 
to  growth  through  enjoyment.  During  these 
three  or  four  months  his  splendid  faculties 
ripened  rapidly.  On  the  other  hand,  his  im- 
pulsiveness and  boldness  (and  the  boldness 
came  largely  from  the  purity)  projected  him 
into  positions  where,  in  a  community  ruled  by 
custom  and  inherited  law  (as  all  enduring  com- 
munities must  in  large  measure  be),  he  was 
much  exposed  to  calamitous  repulses.  His 
warm,  enthusiastic  temper  demanded  more 
than  the  ordinary  course  of  discipline  through 
trouble.  A  very  large  share  of  such  disci- 
pline fell  to  him  between  his  fifteenth  and  his 
twenty-fifth  years. 

Shortly  after  his  return  to  England,  in  18 16, 
came  the  news  that  Harriet  had  drowned  her- 


200  SHELLEY. 

self  in  the  Serpentine.  From  Bath,  where 
they  were  temporarily  staying,  he  hurried  up 
to  London.  His  agony  was  intense.  This 
event  cast  on  him  a  shadow,  from  the  gloom 
of  which  he  never  entirely  recovered.  It  could 
not  but  be  so.  Harriet  had  loved  him,  had 
given  herself  to  him  unreservedly.  At  the 
first  shock  of  such  a  blow  a  man  of  Shelley's 
sensibility  would  blame  himself  unduly.  Aft- 
erwards self-reproach  would  be  overshadowed 
by  a  darker  feeling,  as  of  a  mysterious  enmity 
of  fate.  With  all  this  would  mingle  tears  of 
pity  for  poor  Harriet.  If,  a  little  later,  as  was 
reported,  he  could  say  of  her  suicide  that  it 
was  the  act  of  a  "frantic  idiot,"  this  was  to 
hide,  even  from  himself,  the  depth  of  his  an- 
guish, 

A  few  weeks  after  the  death  of  Harriet, 
Shelley  and  Mary  were  married.  They  were 
two  years  older  than  when  they  joined  hands. 
They  were  of  a  quality  to  grow  wiser  in  that 
lapse  of  time.  They  were  living  in  England, 
not  on  a  far  island  which  they  had  all  to  them- 
selves. They  had  had  enough  of  island  life ; 
for  the  eccentricity  of  their  wedded  union  had 
insulated  them  uncomfortably.  A  single  pair, 
however    pure,   cannot    contend   against    the 


SHELLEY.  201 

whole  married  world.  To  spit  against  a  strong 
steady  wind  is  to  spit  in  one's  own  face.  That 
they  should  decide  to  live  in  Rome  somewhat 
as  Romans  do,  was  no  sacrifice  of  principle  to 
expediency.  Principle  has  higher  tests  than 
self-gratification  through  pet  theories. 

Close  upon  the  stunning  blow  of  Harriet's 
death  came  another  which  was  the  sequent  of 
that.  Mr.  Westbrook  refused  to  give  up  to 
Shelley  his  and  Harriet's  two  children,  and 
Lord  Chancellor  Eldon  upheld  him  by  a  de- 
cree which  took  the  children  out  of  Shelley's 
hands  on  the  ground  of  opinions  in  Queen 
Mab  and  his  conduct  to  Harriet.  A  stretch 
of  judicial  power  over  individual  rights  was 
this,  which  no  tory  Lord  Chancellor  would 
venture  upon  to-day.  Very  hard  was  it  to 
bear.  It  wounded  Shelley  as  a  parent,  it 
angered  him  as  a  citizen ;  he  felt  it  as  a  two- 
fold outrage,  —  as  a  wrong  and  an  indignity. 

A  house  at  Great  Marlow  was  taken  on  a 
long  lease  by  Shelley.  There  Leigh  Hunt 
visited  him,  and  gives  of  Shelley's  daily  life 
the  following  account :  "  He  rose  early  in  the 
morning,  walked  and  read  before  breakfast, 
took  that  meal  sparingly,  wrote  and  studied 
the  greater  part  of  the  morning,  walked  and 


202  SHELLEY. 

read  again,  dined  on  vegetables  (for  he  took 
neither  meat  nor  wine),  conversed  with  his 
friends  (to  whom  his  house  was  ever  open), 
again  walked  out,  and  usually  finished  with 
reading  to  his  wife  till  ten  o'clock,  when  he 
went  to  bed.  This  was  his  daily  existence. 
His  book  was  generally  Plato,  or  Homer,  or 
one  of  the  Greek  tragedians,  or  the  Bible,  in 
which  last  he  took  a  great,  though  peculiar, 
and  often  admiring  interest.  One  of  his  favor- 
ite parts  was  the  book  of  Job." 

On  Shelley's  remarkable  Essay  on  Christian- 
ity Mr.  Symonds  makes  this  sound  comment  : 
"  We  have  only  to  read  Shelley's  Essay  on 
CJiristianity  in  order  to  perceive  what  rever- 
ent admiration  he  felt  for  Jesus,  and  how  pro- 
foundly he  understood  the  true  character  of 
his  teaching.  That  work,  brief  as  it  is,  forms 
one  of  the  most  valuable  extant  contributions 
to  a  sound  theology,  and  is  morally  far  in  ad- 
vance of  the  ojoinions  expressed  by  many  who 
regard  themselves  as  specially  qualified  to 
speak  on  the  subject.  It  is  certain  that,  as 
Christianity  passes  beyond  its  mediaeval  phase, 
and  casts  aside  the  husk  of  out-worn  dogmas, 
it  will  more  and  more  approximate  to  Shel 
ley's  exposition.     Here  and  here  only  is  a  vital 


SHELLEY.  203 

faith,  adapted  to  the  conditions  of  modern 
thought,  indestructible  because  essential,  and 
fitted  to  unite  instead  of  separating  minds  of 
divers  quality.  It  may  sound  paradoxical  to 
claim  for  Shelley  of  all  men  a  clear  insight 
into  the  enduring  element  of  the  Christian 
creed ;  but  it  was  precisely  his  detachment 
from  all  its  accidents  which  enabled  him  to 
discern  its  spiritual  purity,  and  placed  him  in 
a  true  relation  to  its  Founder.  For  those  who 
would  neither  on  the  one  hand  relinquish  what 
is  permanent  in  religion,  nor  yet  on  the  other 
deny  the  inevitable  conclusions  of  modern 
thought,  his  teaching  is  indubitably  valuable. 
His  fierce  tirades  against  historic  Christianity 
must  be  taken  as  directed  against  an  ecclesi- 
astical system  of  spiritual  tyranny,  hypocrisy, 
and  superstition,  which  in  his  opinion  had  re- 
tarded the  growth  of  free  institutions,  and  fet- 
tered the  human  intellect.  Like  Campanella, 
he  distinguished  between  Christ,  who  sealed 
the  gospel  of  charity  with  his  blood,  and  those 
Christians  who  would  be  the  first  to  crucify 
their  Lord  if  he  returned  to  earth." 

That  was  a  model  life  for  a  cultivated  coun- 
try gentleman.  But  there  was  in  it  a  feature 
which  made  it  a  shining  model  for  a  Christian 


204  SHELLS  V. 

gentleman.  He  assiduously  helped  the  needy 
in  Great  Marlow  ;  the  sick  poor  he  comforted 
at  their  bedsides.  In  London  he  had  walked 
the  hospitals  that  he  might  administer  to  them. 
And  his  charities  were  not  unconsidered  ;  he 
inquired  personally  into  the  circumstances  of 
those  who  sought  his  aid.  At  the  same  time 
his  house  was  hospitably  open  to  friends.  Miss 
Clairmont  and  her  brother  were  permanent 
guests  with  him.  At  different  times  he  re- 
lieved Godwin  and  Hunt  and  Peacock  with 
loans,  or  rather,  with  gifts,  in  two  cases  gifts 
of  more  than  a  thousand  pounds. 

At  Great  Marlow,  in  his  twenty-fifth  year, 
working  daily  for  six  months,  sometimes  in  his 
boat,  sometimes  on  a  wooded  promontory  over- 
looking the  Thames,  Shelley  wrote  T/ie  Revolt 
of  Islam.  Would  a  painter  represent  Shelley 
in  the  fervor  of  poetic  activity,  he  should  be 
able  to  put  on  canvas  a  young  man  with  a 
countenance  of  singular  beauty,  intelligence 
sparkling  through  benignity,  seated  out  of 
doors,  in  a  boat  or  under  ancient  oaks,  about 
him  from  the  earth  a  transparent  golden  haze, 
above  him  a  glow  of  light  whence  the  angels 
of  purity,  freedom,  beauty,  and  truth  beam 
upon   him    celestial    influence.      Under   their 


SHELLEY.  205 

high  guardianship  and  inspiration  Shelley  ever 
wrote.  In  the  first  period  of  his  brilliant  lit- 
erary career,  until  his  twenty-sixth  year,  he 
wrote  his  longer  poems  with  a  distinct  moral 
aim.  In  the  first  paragcaph  of  the  Preface  to 
The  Revolt  of  Islam  he  avows  :  "  I  have  sought 
to  enlist  the  harmony  of  metrical  language,  the 
ethereal  combinations  of  the  fancy,  the  rapid 
and  sudden  transitions  of  human  passion,  all 
those  elements  which  essentially  compose  a 
poem,  in  the  cause  of  a  liberal  and  compre- 
hensive morality ;  and  in  the  view  of  kindling 
within  the  bosoms  of  my  readers  a  virtuous 
enthusiasm  for  those  doctrines  of  liberty  and 
justice,  that  faith  and  hope  in  something  good, 
which  neither  violence  nor  misrepresentation 
nor  prejudice  can  ever  totally  extinguish  among 
mankind." 

The  Revolt  of  Islam  is  an  historical  Epic  in 
twelve  Cantos,  written  in  Spenserian  stanzas, 
and  making  over  four  thousand  five  hundred 
lines.  Great  though  it  be  as  a  literary  achieve- 
ment. The  Revolt  of  Islam  may  be  looked  upon 
as  a  preparatory  exercitation.  Shelley  was  here 
straining  his  poetic  bow  to  test  its  elastic 
strength,  running  the  beautiful  Spenserian 
stanza  through  the  whole  gamut  of  its  sweet- 


206  SHELLEY. 

ness  and  its  power.  He  was  whetting  his 
finely-tempered  weapons,  polishing  his  brilliant 
armor,  practicing  his  exuberant  fancy,  strength- 
ening the  pinions  of  his  ardent  imagination, 
inflaming  its  boldness,  feeding  its  power,  cul- 
tivating its  visionariness,  steeping  it  in  the 
moist  rainbow  of  choice  diction,  girding  his 
young  thoughts  with  young  experience.  With 
his  hero  he  might  say : 

"  With  the  heart's  warfare  did  I  gather  food 
To  feed  my  many  thoughts,  a  tameless  multitude-" 

The  abundance  of  thoughts  is  marvelous, 
not  less  so  is  the  poetic  buoyancy  with  which 
they  are  winged.  There  is  no  want  of  life, 
passion,  movement,  rapidity.  But  there  is  a 
want  of  density  in  the  materials,  and  in  the 
handling  of  them  some  want  of  organization. 
The  material  is  not  enough  historical  and  at 
the  same  time  too  much  so.  The  poet  wields 
millions  of  massed  men  as  though  they  were 
single  individuals.  No  human  mind  can  create 
history  ;  only  God  can  do  that.  The  Poet's 
counterpart  will  lack  bone ;  there  will  be  no 
gritty  skeleton  behind  the  flesh,  giving  to  the 
whole  and  to  each  limb  firmness,  expression. 

The  hero  of  this  noble  poem  hopes  by  elo- 


SHELLE  V.  207 

quent  words  to  insj^ire  a  whole  semi-barbarous 
people  with  the  high  resolves  of  his  own  great 
soul,  and  so  to  lift  them  into  freedom,  —  a  pro- 
cedure counter  to  the  possibilities  of  nature  as 
man  and  politics  are  constituted.  Freedom  is 
a  gradual  achievement,  a  very  gradual  inch  by 
inch  conquest,  —  an  achievement  which  implies 
ages  upon  ages  of  persevering,  intelligent  en- 
deavor, of  unquenchable  aspiration.  Growth, 
and  slow  growth,  is  a  deep  beneficent  law. 
Individual  moral  freedom  is  the  only  stable 
foundation  for  general  political  freedom.  All 
human  good  must  be  earned,  or  it  will  not  be 
a  good.  To  be  sure,  in  T/ie  Reiwlt  of  Islam  the 
enterprise  fails,  and  the  hero  and  heroine  end 
in  being  martyrs.  But  the  story  and  the  inci- 
dents do  not  take  strong  hold  of  the  reader's 
sympathies.  There  is  not  body  enough  be- 
hind the  splendid  vesture.  The  whole  struct- 
ure is  too  aerial. 

Beautiful  pictures  and  scenes,  lovely  re- 
cesses, spirit-stirring  sentences,  fresh  figures 
of  speech,  poetic  glimpses,  abound.  The  flow 
of  high  thought,  of  noble  sentiment,  is  unin- 
termitted,  and  is  astonishing  by  its  ease,  its 
limpidity,  its  liveliness,  its  unbroken  music,  — 
music  most  rhythmical,  and  so  laden  with  the 


2o8  SHELLEY. 

breath  of  wholesome  feeling,  of  manliness,  of 
aspiration,  that  the  reader  feels  himself,  one 
might  almost  say,  thrilled  as  by  angelic  cho- 
ruses. The  twelve  Cantos,  all  palpitating 
and  lustrous  with  sympathy,  with  enthusiasm, 
crowded  with  felicities  of  diction,  with  tune- 
ful reduplications,  are  a  luminous  labyrinth, 
wherein  the  admiring  reader  can  wander  at 
will  with  ever  freshened  delight.  Here  the 
imitative,  assimilative  poet,  who  has  not  the 
originating  soul  of  Shelley,  can  feather  his  own 
poetic  nest,  while  wondering  at  the  countless 
gems  of  spontaneous  thought,  the  ceaseless 
upspringing  of  new  flowers  of  poetry. 

In  March,  1818,  Shelley,  then  in  his  twenty- 
sixth  year,  left  England  for  Italy.  His  health 
was  bad ;  the  seeming  pulmonary  symptoms 
were  still  present.  Over  Mary  and  him  there 
came  at  times  a  shudder  at  the  thought  that 
the  ruthless  Lord  Chancellor  might  with  ra- 
pacious claws  pounce  upon  their  two  little 
chicks,  as  he  had  upon  the  other  two.  (To 
know  how  Shelley  felt  that  outrage,  read  his 
terrific  curse  on  Lord  Eldon,  a  rhythmic  curse 
of  sixteen  short  stanzas  ;  also  some  bitter  lines 
in  \.\'\Q,Mask  of  Anarchy.)  Tyrants  and  knaves, 
beware,  for  your  own  sakes,  how  you  wound  a 
great  poet ! 


SHELLEY.  209 

Shelley's  income  would  go  much  further  in 
Italy.  Generosity  and  charity  kept  him  always 
pinched.  Then  he  longed  to  be  in  Italy  for 
its  glorious  self,  as  well  as  for  its  milder  cli- 
mate. 

Italy  told  at  once  favorably  upon  his  health 
and  spirits.  Now  began  his  most  richly  pro- 
ductive period ;  and  such  a  man's  chief  joy  is 
in  literary  production.  In  midsummer  he  went 
to  Venice  to  have  some  more  talks  with  Byron. 
Of  course  Shelley  could  not  approve  of  Byron's 
life  at  Venice.  He  was  himself  unsullied  sex- 
ually. In  his  practice  he  did  not  break  the 
healthy  wholeness  of  love,  dividing  the  animal 
from  the  spiritual, — a  wholeness  upon  which 
so  largely  depends  the  enjoyment,  the  comfort, 
the  refinement,  the  morality,  the  improvement, 
the  elevation,  of  human  life.  But  it  was  not 
for  him  to  be  the  moral  censor  of  Byron's  acts 
any  more  than  it  was  to  rebuke  his  cynical 
talk.  Of  the  difference  between  their  views 
the  reader  gets  a  glimpse  in  Julian  and  Mad- 
dalo,  a  fruit  of  this  visit. 

Julian  and  Maddalo  is  one  of  the  most  char- 
acteristic of  Shelley's  poems,  one  of  the  most 
fluent  and  melodious,  and  musical  fluency  is  an 
eminent  excellence  of  Shelley's  verse.  Shelley 
14 


210  SHELLEY. 

was  Stimulated  by  Byron.  It  is  pleasant  to 
think  of  these  two  together  in  a  gondola,  or 
galloping  on  the  Lido.  Byron  never  met  with 
a  man  whose  company  he  enjoyed  so  much  as 
that  of  Shelley.  It  was  the  highest  company 
he  had  ever  kept,  and  it  is  to  his  honor  that  he 
valued  so  fully  the  man  and  the  gentleman. 
Shelley,  on  his  part,  felt  that  he  was  here  ap- 
preciated, and  by  a  brother  poet,  whom  he  then 
regarded  as  greater  than  himself  ;  and  to  be 
thus  appreciated  was  for  him  a  rare  happiness. 
To  both  this  meeting  was  a  joyous  holiday  :  it 
raised  both  to  their  highest  spirits  and  to  their 
best  talk. 

How  clear  an  insight  Shelley  had  into  the 
very  core  of  Byron  a  few  lines  will  show  : 

"  We  descanted,  and  I  (forever  still 
Is  it  not  wise  to  make  the  best  of  ill .-' ) 
Argued  against  despondency,  but  pride 
Made  my  companion  take  the  darker  side. 
The  sense  that  he  was  greater  than  his  kind 
Had  struck,  methinks,  his  eagle  spirit  blind 
By  gazing  on  its  own  exceeding  light." 

A  little  further  on,  alluding  to  their  talk  the 
evening  before,  Julian  (Shelley)  tells  Maddalo 
(Byron)  that  the  words  he  spoke  about  man 
being  a  passive  thing  might  well  have  cast  "a 


SHELLEY.  211 

darkness  on  my  spirit,"  and  then,  looking  at 
Byron's  little  Allegra,  he  continues  : 

"  See 
This  lovely  child,  blithe,  innocent,  and  free, 
She  spends  a  happy  time  with  little  care, 
While  we  to  such  sick  thoughts  subjected  are 
As  came  on  you  last  night  —  it  is  our  will 
That  thus  enchains  us  to  permitted  ill  — 
We  might  be  otherzvise  —  ive  might  be  all 
We  dream  of  happy,  high,  majestical. 
Where  is  the  love,  beauty,  and  truth  we  seek 
But  in  our  mind  ?  and  if  we  were  not  weak 
Should  we  be  less  in  deed  than  in  desire  ?  " 

This  is  Shelley's  noble  belief,  that  in  the 
soul  of  man  there  is  a  divine  power,  whereby 
he  can  cut  his  way  upward  towards  light  and 
freedom,  —  a  belief  which,  had  he  lived,  would 
have  vivified  and  elevated  whatever  he  wrote, 
and  of  which  his  actual  work  gives  beaming 
intimations.  The  loaded  lines  I  have  italicized 
tell  of  the  spiritual  potency  of  Shelley's  mind. 
This  spirituality,  seconded  by  his  keen  intelli- 
gence, his  manly  independence,  his  rare  gifts 
of  utterance,  made  him  speak  out  against  the 
tyrannous  abuses  which,  in  the  name  of  relig- 
ion and  of  government,  have  perverted  and 
weighed  down  the  will  of  man.  What  Shel- 
ley now  for  the  first  time  personally  beheld  in 
Italy,  the   lowering,   emasculating,  depressive 


212  SHELLEY. 

action,  upon  the  human  spirit,  of  a  domineer- 
ing priesthood,  confirmed  him  in  his  previous 
opinions,  —  opinions  nourished  by  history  and 
by  sure  intuitions. 

Bearing  on  Byron's  view  of  life  here  is  a 
striking  passage  from  a  lecture  on  poetry  by 
that  eloquent,  large-souled  English  clergyman, 
F.  W.  Robertson  of  Brighton  : 

"  Among  the  former  divisions  of  the  egoistic 
class  of  first-rate  poets,  severe  justice  compels 
me  with  pain  to  place  Lord  Byron.  Brought 
up  under  the  baleful  influences  of  Calvinism, 
which  makes  sovereign  Will  the  measure  of 
Right,  instead  of  Right  the  cause  and  law  of 
Will,  a  system  which  he  all  his  life  hated  and 
believed,  —  fancying  himself  the  mark  of  an 
inexorable  decree,  and  bidding  a  terrible  defi- 
ance to  the  unjust  One  who  had  fixed  his 
doom,  —  no  wonder  that,  as  in  that  strange 
phenomenon  the  spectre  of  the  Brocken,  the 
traveler  sees  a  gigantic  form  cast  upon  the 
mists,  which  he  discovers  at  last  to  be  but  his 
own  shadow ;  so,  the  noble  poet  went  through 
life  haunted,  turn  which  way  he  would,  with 
the  gigantic  shadow  of  himself,  which  obscured 
the  heavens  and  turned  the  light  into  thick 
darkness." 


SHELLS  Y.  213 

The  celestial  light  Shelley  carried  within 
him  was  ever  getting  shadowed  by  earthly 
clouds.  The  opinions  of  Byron  and  the  life 
he  led  at  Venice,  and  the  life  that  all  Venice 
was  leading,  might  have  darkened  the  faith  of 
a  less  spiritually-minded  man,  but  by  his  in- 
grown wings  of  love  and  rectitude  Shelley  was 
empowered. to  maintain  his  exaltation  above 
the  platitudes  and  grossnesses  about  him, 
holding  easily  to  his  belief  of  a  possible  bet- 
ter, and  keeping  his  pure  ideals  ever  lively  in 
his  soul. 

Of  the  all  -  transcending  might  of  mind 
Shelley  is  a  two-fold  exemplification,  through 
his  rhythmic,  splendidly  original  poetry,  "and 
through  his  tenacity  of  faith  in  good  and  the 
final  triumph  of  truth.  This  faith  led  him 
back  into  the  dim  abysm  of  Greek  mythology 
to  the  profound  significant  fable  of  Prome- 
theus. Out  of  chaos  Prometheus  emerges, 
lifted  by  the  fire  which  is  to  be  the  means  of 
subduing  chaos  and  of  final  emancipation  from 
the  law  of  brute  force.  This  fire  is  a  noble, 
divine  soul. 

The  preface  to  his  PromctJieiis  Shelley 
opens  by  stating  that  the  Greek  tragic  poets, 
in  treating   mythological    and   historical    sub- 


214  SHELLEY. 

jects,  exercised  "a  certain  arbitrary  discre- 
tion "  in  the  interpretation  of  a  subject.  This 
high  jDrecedent  he  follows  ;  and  it  may  be 
added,  that  had  he  not  found  the  precedent, 
his  moral  boldness,  inspiring  his  intellectual 
force,  would  have  moved  him  to  originate  it. 
.^schylus  makes  Prometheus  purchase  recon- 
ciliation with  Jupiter  and  his  own  release  by 
revealing  a  danger  that  threatened  Jupiter. 
Here  the  higher  spirituality  of  Shelley  dis- 
closed to  him  a  deeper  motive,  prompting  him 
not  to  permit  any  compromise  of  principle. 
This  interpretation,  while  adding  to  the  moral 
grandeur  of  the  Titan  rebel,  deepens  the  ecs- 
thetic  resources.  Shelley  makes  Prometheus 
"the  type  of  the  highest  perfection  of  moral 
and  intellectual  nature,  impelled  by  the  purest, 
motives  to  the  best  and  noblest  ends."  From 
the  end  of  the  preface  I  copy  the  following 
important  passage  :  "  My  purpose  hitherto  has 
been  simply  to  familiarize  the  highly  refined 
imagination  of  the  more  select  classes  of 
poetical  readers  wdth  beautiful  idealisms  of 
moral  excellence  ;  aware  that,  until  the  mind 
can  love,  and  admire,  and  trust,  and  hope,  and 
endure,  reasoned  principles  of  moral  conduct  - 
are  seeds  cast  upon  the  highway  of  life,  which 


SHELLEY.  215 

the  unconscious  passenger  tramples  into  dust 
although  they  would  bear  the  harvest  of  his 
happiness."  This  passage  is  more  important 
biographically  than  critically. 

The  great  Greek  mind,  adventurous,  meta- 
physical, poetical,  insatiable,  strove  to  get 
down  to  the  root  of  being,  to  seize  the  princi- 
ples that  rule  in  the  creative  process,  the  con- 
ditions that  prevail  in  the  formation  of  man, 
and  in  his  sphere  of  action.  Out  of  this  grew 
the  myth  of  Prometheus,  a  poetic  effort  to  em- 
body the  conflict,  and  yet  the  necessary  coop- 
eration, between  mind  and  matter,  between 
substance  and  form.  Around  us  we  daily  see 
this  conflict  and  necessary  union  between  in- 
stitutions and  the  needs  and  principles  that 
produce  them.  The  principles,  which  are  the 
generative  constituent,  through  the  ambitious 
seeking  of  those  that  wield  them,  are  liable  to 
get  merged  and  forgotten  in  the  institutions 
they  have  created,  and  thence  to  resist  change 
and  improvement.  Thus  they  grow  oppress- 
ive, tyrannizing  over  those  for  whose  sake  was 
made  the  incarnation  of  the  spirit  in  institu- 
tions. This  is  the  position  and  part  of  Jupiter 
in  the  old  myth.  Prometheus  represents  the 
unincarnated  spirit  that  resists  the  usurpation 
of  Jupiter. 


2l6  SHELLEY. 

Prometheus  being  fired  by  the  divine  spark 
in  man  that  will  not  submit  to  passive  unpro- 
gressive  conditions,  and  Jupiter  being  pos- 
sessed by  the  will  that  would  enforce  these 
conditions,  their  quarrel  symbolizes  the  con- 
tention between  aspiration  and  stagnancy,  — 
between  free  thought  and  arbitrary  coercion, 
between  the  light  which  leads  to  high  condi- 
tions and  the  darkness  that  grovels  in  low. 

Brilliant  and  povVerful  is  the  poetic  embodi- 
ment by  Shelley  of  this  high  theme.  He  gives 
full  swing  to  his  supreme  lyrical  genius.  He 
calls  it  A  Lyrical  Drama,  but  it  is  the  grandest 
of  lyrics  in  dramatic  form.  The  figures,  beam- 
ing with  poetry,  are  not  pulse-thridded  bodies, 
but  shining  incarnations  of  principles  and  es- 
sences in  the  semblance  of  bodies.  Prome- 
theus himself  is  not  a  personage,  but  the  re- 
splendent embodiment  of  a  prolific  idea,  an 
idea  by  no  means  ancient,  but  supremely 
modern  and  spiritual,  that  man  as  a  soul  is 
not  only  indestructible,  but,  through  high  will 
inspired  by  love,  is  creative.  Intellectual 
strength,  power  of  resolve  and  endurance, 
lofty  aims,  are  in  Shelley's  Proinetheiis,  but 
the  might  that  empowers  him  finally  to  tri- 
umph over  Jupiter  is  Love.     Love  is  the  re- 


SHELLEY.  217 

deemer  of  mankind.  About  the  chained  mar- 
tyr gather,  to  comfort  him,  from  all  quarters, 
spirits  and  shapes.  Listen  to  the  music  one 
of  these  sings  to  him  : 

"  On  a  poet's  lips  I  slept, 
Dreaming  like  a  love-adept 
In  the  sound  his  breathing  kept. 
Nor  seeks  nor  finds  he  mortal  blisses 
But  feeds  on  the  aerial  kisses 
Of  shapes  that  haunt  thought's  wildernesses. 
He  will  watch  from  dawn  to  gloom 
The  lake-reflected  sun  illume 
The  yellow  bees  in  the  ivy-bloom, 
Nor  heed"nor  see  what  things  they  be  j 
But  from  these  create  he  can 
Forms  more  real  than  living  man, 
Nurslings  of  immortality. 
One  of  these  awakened  me, 
And  I  sped  to  succour  thee." 

Shelley's  brain  is  an  exhaustless  spring  of 

likenesses  which  his  poetic  faculty  illuminates 

into  beauty  and  significance.     What  freshness 

and  grandeur  there  is  in  this  : 

"  A  howl 
Of  cataracts  from  their  thaw-cloven  ravines 
Satiates  the  listening  wind,  continuous,  vast, 
Awful  as  silence.     Hark  !  the  rushing  snow  ! 
The  sun-awakened  avalanche  !  whose  mass. 
Thrice  sifted  by  the  storm,  had  gathered  there 
Flake  after  flake,  —  in  heaven-defying  minds 
As  thought  by  thought  is  piled,  till  some  great  truth 


2l8  SHELLEY. 

Is  loosened,  and  the  nations  echo  round 
Shaken  to  their  roots,  as  do  the  mountains  now." 

It  would  not  be  right  to  say,  that  in  Prome- 
theus we  miss  the  solidity  of  Shakespeare,  the 
incorporation  of  poetry  into  firm-limbed  men 
and  women.  PrometJieiis  deals  in  elemental 
forces,  in  ideal  forms,  in  voices  more  than  in 
speakers,  in  humanized  beams  of  light.  One 
of  the  Fauns  in  the  second  Act  asks  : 

"  Canst  thou  imagine  where  those  spirits  live 
Which  make  such  delicate  music  in  the  woods  ?  " 

They  live  in  the  poet's  brain,  and  so  vividly 
that  through  his  flashing,  golden  words  they 
are  made  to  live  in  ours.  The  choral  pages  in 
Prometheus  are  as  Shakespearean  as  the  Puck- 
passages  in  Midsummer-Night's  Dream,  only 
created  with  a  high,  holy  purpose.  And  Pro- 
metheus himself  is  a  transfigured  Lear,  suffer- 
ing, not  for  his  own  willfulness,  but  suffering 
through  power  of  soulful  will  for  the  emanci- 
pation of  oppressed  humanity. 

Before  Prometheus  was  quite  finished,  Shel- 
ley set  to  work,  in  May,  1819,  upon  The  Cenci. 
Dante  wrote  his  Hell  first,  long  before  the 
Heaven.  Shelley  wrote  his  Heaven  first,  and 
plunged  right  out  of  it  into  Hell,  and  into  the 
lowest  abyss.     In  Dante's  Hell  there  is  no  pit 


SHELLEY.  219 

deep  enough  and  damning  enough  for  Shelley's 
Francesco  Cenci.  That  a  poet,  aglow  with  the 
love,  winged  with  the  splendors,  of  -Shelley's 
ProuictJieus,  should  have  been  able  to  make 
himself  at  home  in  all  the  subtlest  imaginations 
of  hate  and  lust  and  extreme  villainy,  creating 
and  depicting  such  a  hell  as  the  heart  of  his 
Cenci,  proves  the  immense  imaginative  range 
of  this  poet,  together  with  his  boundless  re- 
sources of  feeling. 

Shakespeare  created  a  Caliban,  and  Shelley 
created  a  Cenci,  who  is  a  prosperous  Caliban. 
But  is  not,  in  a  populous,  civilized  community, 
a  prosperous  Caliban  an  impossibility  }  Is  it 
not  an  extravagant  satire,  even  upon  the  reek- 
ing rottenness  of  Rome  at  the  end  of  the  six- 
teenth century,  to  suppose  that  one  like  Shel- 
ley's Cenci  could  have  so  thriven  there,  that 
he  could  collect  around  him  in  his  own  palace 
the  chief  cardinals  and  princes  and  dignitaries 
of  the  then  capital  of  the  world  ?  Cenci  is  a 
fiend,  a  demon,  a  blaze  demon,  not  a  man. 
The  lurid  glare  from  his  core  effaces  by  its 
hideousness  all  poetic  light.  We  cannot  even 
pity  him,  he  is  beyond  our  fellow-feeling,  we 
can  hardly  wish  him  redeemed,  so  far  is  he 
below  the  zero  of  the  human  scale  in  moral 


220  SHELLEY. 

deformity.  So  hickened  and  darkened  by  his 
presence  is  the  whole  atmosphere,  it  is  im- 
penetrable to  any  streak  of  poetic  light.  The 
Cenci  is  a  wonderful  creation,  but  is  it  a  poetic 
tragedy }  Is  not  its  all-absorbing  chief  figure 
too  unhuman  for  the  sympathy  that  poetic 
tragedy  should  awaken }  We  will  not  dis- 
honor lions  and  tigers  by  calling  him  a  wild 
beast ;  they  obey  natural  instincts,  he  is  an 
unnatural  monster ;  they  are  terrible,  he  is 
horrible. 


VI. 

The  growth  of  a  great  poet,  when  con 
scious  of  his  vocation  and  his  powers,  is  some- 
thing to  fill  the  Gods  with  their  sunniest  glad- 
ness. When,  as  in  the  case  of  Shelley,  the 
poet  is  ennobled  by  the  man,  earth  presents 
no  more  promising,  animating  process  than 
such  a  poet's  unfolding.  In  Italy  Shelley's 
outward  senses  were  daily  cultivated  in  the 
beautiful  presence  of  that  chosen  land,  while 
his  inward  senses,  luxuriating  at  a  feast  of 
memories,  were  fed  by  records  of  the  words 
and  deeds  of  the  lofty  men.  whose  lives  have 
woven  an  unfading  halo,  that  draws  to  Italy, 
from  generation  to  generation,  many  of  the 
choice  spirits  of  other  lands.  These,  like  Shel- 
ley and  Goethe,  climb  and  revel  in  a  conge- 
nial mental  atmosphere.  The  imaginations 
of  Shelley  were  here  enriched  and  chastened. 
What  a  crescent  fermentation  in  the  brain  that 
could,  within  a  twelve-month,  throw  off  both 
Prometheus  and  The  Cenci. 

On   the    partially  popular   success    of    The 


222  SHELLEY. 

Ccnci  Mrs.  Shelley  seized  to  build  a  hope  that 
hereby  her  husband  might  be  moved  to  make 
further  trials  in  this  new  field.  Instead  of 
yielding  to  her  persuasions  he  wrote  The 
Witch  of  Atlas,  the  most  ethereal  and  fanciful 
of  his  poems.  The  dedication  to  his  wife 
opens  with  this  stanza : 

"  How,  my  dear  Mary,  are  you  critic-bitten 

(For  vipers  kill  though  dead)  by  some  review, — 
That  you  condemn  these  verses  I  have  written, 

Because  they  tell  no  story  false  or  true  ? 
What  though  no  mice  are  caught  by  a  young  kitten  ? 

May  it  not  leap  or  play  as  grown  cats  do, 
Till  its  claws  come  ?    Prithee,  for  this  one  time, 

Content  thee  with  a  visionary  rhyme." 

Conceive  of  an  eagle  chained  in  a  close, 
shady,  back-yard,  fed  on  cooked  meat  from  the 
kitchen ;  then  conceive  of  him  broken  loose 
and  soaring  through  the  sunlit  air  to  rejoin 
his  wild  mate  and  eaglets  in  their  mountain 
eyrie.  Like  his  was  the  cry  of  exultation  of 
Shelley  when,  instead  of  being  constrained  to 
breathe  the  seething,  stifling  atmosphere  of 
diabolically  perverted  jDassion  in  TJie  Cenci,  he 
found  himself  careering  on  unchained  imagi- 
nations with  TJie  Witch  of  Atlas. 

But  it  were  a  mistake  to  conclude  that,  be- 
cause   The    Witch    of  Atlas   is   a    "visionary 


SHELLEY.  223 

rhyme,"  it  is  outside  of  humanity,  or  that  be- 
cause the  Witch  hath  the  privilege  of  making 
the  wind,  and  Hghtning,  and  shooting  stars  her 
playmates,  and  of  summoning  spirits  out  of 
"  the  hollow  turrets  of  those  high  clouds,"  she 
is  above  sympathy  with  human  beings.  She  is 
exquisitely  human ;  for,  freed  from  the  gross- 
nesses  of  earthly  feeling,  a  creature  woven  out 
of  beauty,  she  is  possessed  with  love  and 
cheerfulness,  her  mission  being  to  show  that 
all  things  can  profitably  intermingle,  "  through 
which  the  harmony  of  love  can  pass."  To  be 
in  all  ways  beautiful,  and  make  the  beautiful 
sparkle  about  her  glance,  like  diamonds  just 
bared  to  the  sun,  and  to  shed  wherever  she 
passes  the  fragrance  of  unselfish  love,  this  is 
the  essence  of  her  being,  this  is  her  raison 
d'etre. 

In  Victor  Hugo's  brilliant  volume  on  Shake- 
speare, in  one  of  its  most  brilliant  chapters, 
entitled  The  Beautiful,  the  Servant  of  the  Good, 
— a  chapter  especially  dedicated  to  combating 
the  tenet  Art  for  Ai-fs  sake,  —  there  is  this  very 
sound  passage  :  "  You  say,  the  Muse  is  made 
to  sing,  to  love,  to  believe,  to  pray.  I  answer 
Yes  and  No.  Let  us  understand  one  another. 
To    sins:  what  }     The  void.     To   love  what  } 


224  SHELLEY. 

One's  self.  To  believe  what  ?  Dogma,  To 
pray  to  what  ?  The  Idol.  No,  here  is  the 
truth  ;  to  sing  the  ideal,  to  love  humanity,  to 
believe  in  progress,  to  pray  towards  the  Infi- 
nite." And  the  following  paragraph  ends 
with  these  words :  "  Show  me,  Genius,  thy 
foot,  and  let  us  see  if  thou  hast,  as  I  have,  the 
dust  of  the  earth  on  thy  heel." 

Now  Shelley,  fond  and  capable  as  he  was  of 
soaring,  carried  on  his  heel  so  much  of  earth's 
dust  he  always  brought  some  back  when  he 
redescended.  However  high  his  flight,  never 
was  broken  the  cord  that  bound  his  heart  to 
humanity ;  and  so  strong  was  the  beat  of  that 
heart  and  so  warm  its  blood,  that  the  closer  he 
comes  to  his  fellows  the  more  musical  is  the 
ring  of  his  verse,  the  more  poetical  its  tissue. 
Thus,  when  in  the  latter  part  of  the  poem  the 
Witch 

'•  Past  through  the  peopled  haunts  of  human  kind, 
Scattering  sweet  visions  from  her  presence  sweet," 

the  reader's  pulse  rises  to  the  intenser  throb  in 
the  verse.     For  example : 

"  A  pleasure  sweet  doubtless  it  was  to  see 

Mortals  subdued  in  all  the  shapes  of  sleep. 
Here  lay  two  sister  twins  in  infancy  ; 
There,  a  lone  youth  who  in  his  dreams  did  weep  ; 


SHELLEY.  225 

Within,  two  lovers  linked  innocently 

In  their  loose  locks  which  over  both  did  creep 
Like  ivy  from  one  stem  ;  —  and  there  lay  calm 
Old  age  with  snow-bright  hair  and  folded  palm." 

Through  his  exquisite  sensibility  to  the 
beautiful  in  its  manifold  display,  in  quick  alli- 
ance with  a  keen  intellect,  Shelley  was  an  un- 
surpassed master  of  artistic  presentation.  But 
for  him  the  most  necessary  beauty  in  a  poem 
is  moral  beauty.  As  artist  Shelley  knew  the 
futility  of  making  poems  the  direct  teachers  of 
morals  or  of  anything.  The  virtue  of  poetry 
is  in  its  indirect  effect,  that  is,  in  awakening 
higher  moods  through  the  beautiful ;  and  to 
produce  its  best  effect,  it  should  be  vitalized 
by  a  moral  breath  breathed  into  it  uncon- 
sciously from  the  poet's  soul.  In  a  letter  to 
Mary  in  18 18,  Shelley  writes :  "I  have  been 
reading  the  '  Noble  Kinsmen,'  in  which,  with 
the  exception  of  that  lovely  scene,  to  which 
you  added  so  much  grace  in  reading  it  to  me,  I 
have  been  disappointed.  '  The  Jailer's  Daugh- 
ter' is  a  poor  imitation,  and  deformed.  The 
whole  story  wants  moral  discrimination  and 
modesty.  I  do  not  believe  Shakespeare  wrote 
a  word  of  it."  From  that  want  of  "moral 
discrimination  and  modesty "  Shelley  saga- 
15 


226  SHELLEY. 

ciously  inferred  that  this  play  was  not  written 
by  Shakespeare.  He  discerned  the  spiritual 
depth  there  is  in  Shakespeare,  and  that  to 
this  is  largely  due  his  poetic  supremacy.  The 
voluminous  stream  of  truth  that  runs  through 
his  plays  gets  its  clearness  from  its  moral 
fidelity.  Hence  chiefly  it  is  that  in  studying 
Shakespeare  we  are  purified  and  enlarged. 
After  reading  Homer,  Michael  Angelo  felt  so 
exalted  that  he  would  examine  himself  to  see 
whether  he  was  not  many  feet  higher.  The 
profit  of  poetry  is  in  the  expansion,  the  exalta- 
tion, imparted  to  the  reader  by  the  poet,  who, 
through  clearer  vision,  sees  and  thus  depicts 
objects,  events,  persons,  transfigured,  glori- 
fied, by  the  beautiful.  As  the  moral  beautiful 
is  the  highest  beautiful,  our  expansion,  other 
things  being  equal,  is  in  proj^ortion  to  its 
presence. 

Of  chastening  by  tribulation  Shelley  had 
more  than  one  man's  share.  We  have  seen 
how  troubles  thickened  about  him  in  his  open- 
ing manhood.  At  this  moment  he  was  abused, 
calumniated  in  journals  and  reviews,  frowned 
upon  by  "  Society,"  under  a  ban  in  his  own 
family.  Peacock,  in  one  of  his  letters,  had  ex- 
pressed a  hope  to  see  him  soon  in  England. 


SHELLEY.  227 

Replying  to  his  friend's  letter,  he  writes  from 
Rome  in  April,  1819:  "  I  believe,  my  dear  R, 
that  you  wish  us  to  come  back  to  England. 
How  is  it  possible  ?  Health,  competence,  tran- 
quillity,—  all  these  Italy  permits  and  England 
takes  away.  I  am  regarded  by  all  who  know 
or  hear  of  me,  except,  I  think,  on  the  whole, 
five  individuals,  as  a  rare  prodigy  of  crime  and 
pollution,  whose  look  even  might  infect.  Such 
is  the  spirit  of  the  English  abroad  as  well  as  at 
home." 

And  he  thus  scowled  upon  was  the  most  un- 
selfish, the  most  generous,  the  most  sympa- 
thetic of  men,  the  purest,  the  truest,  the  kind- 
est, the  bravest,  this  rare  pyramid  of  excellence 
being  crowned  by  poetic  genius  and  intellectual 
splendor.  Truly  in  the  first  quarter  of  the 
present  century  the  upper  zone  of  civilizees 
was  still  crude  and  insusceptible  and  bigoted 
and  self-sufficient  in  their  ignorance.  A  fel- 
low-man so  supremely  god-gifted  that  he  should 
be  a  radiance  on  the  earth  is  invisible  to  most, 
and  to  many  who  do  see  him  his  light  is  dark- 
ness, because  not  lighted  at  their  feeble,  un- 
savory taper.  In  the  insolence  of  their  blind 
egoism  they  would  scourge  and  crucify  this 
divine  man,  and  that  chiefly  because  he  does 


228  SHELLEY. 

not  go  to  their  church,  —  and  he  does  not  go 
to  their  church  because  his  rehgion  is  vital, 
of  the  soul,  instead  of  being  formal,  of  the 
tongue. 

From  the  warmth  of  his  yearnings  and  the 
acuteness  of  his  sensibilities,  Shelley's  troubles 
depressed  him  the  more  ;  but  they  could  not 
sour  the  sweetness  of  his  nature,  they  could 
not  harden  his  heart,  —  they  deepened  him. 
Turn  him  into  a  cynic  or  a  scoffer,  or  a  hater, 
they  could  not,  nor  drive  him  to  sound  the 
ocean  of  human  hopes  and  capabilities  with 
the  broken  cord  of  his  own  crosses  and  disap- 
pomtments.  In  Italy,  amid  the  joyful  stimulus 
of  his  rare  faculties,  came  two  of  the  heaviest 
blows  that  ever  fell  upon  him.  Mary  and  he 
lost  their  two  children,  —  Clara,  the  youngest, 
dying  at  Venice,  and  William  a  few  months 
later  at  Rome.  For  a  time  they  were  child- 
less, until  the  I2th  of  November,  1819,  when 
another  son  was  born  to  them  at  Florence,  the 
present  baronet,  Sir  Percy  Florence  Shelley. 

To  whoever  would  get  a  full  view  of  Shel- 
ley, his  letters,  especially  those  written  in  his 
more  mature  years  from  Italy,  are  an  invalua- 
ble repository.  Every  man's  letters  are  auto- 
biographical, but  in  the  case  of  Shelley,  from 


SHELLEY.  229 

the  richness  and  variety  of  his  mental  re- 
sources, they  are  a  chapter  of  biography  which 
serves  to  check  the  most  vivid  of  autobiograph- 
ical chapters,  —  that  written  in  his  poems,  — 
and  also  to  rectify  or  modify  impressions  made 
by  the  reports  of  some  who  were  nearest  and 
dearest  to  him,  —  of  Hogg,  of  Trelawney,  of 
Mary.  By  no  means  do  his  letters  make  him 
appear  less  lofty  in  moral  stature,  less  glow- 
ing in  nature  than  these  devoted,  appreciative 
friends  represent  him  to  be.  They  bring  him 
before  us  even  more  distinctly  than  his  per- 
sonal associates  do,  in  his  cordiality  and  unre- 
serve, in  his  affectionateness  and  unselfish- 
ness ;  and  they  show  him  heartily  interested 
in  what  is  going  on  in  the  world,  ever  ready  to 
lend  a  helping  hand.  How  refined  and  self- 
forgetful  his  tone  towards  Hunt  and  Peacock 
when  asking  them  to  do  him  some  small  favor 
in  London,  —  they  who  were  under  such  deep 
obligations  to  him,  and  who  seem  to  have  been 
worthy  of  his  generosity ;  and  then  his  munif- 
icence to  Godwin.  On  these  precious  letters 
is  stamped  the  seal  of  Shelley's  high  and  lov- 
able being,  his  cordiality,  his  tenderness,  his 
sweetness,  his  disinterestedness,  and  the  un- 
flagging vivacity  of  his  intellect.     We  come 


230  SHELLEY. 

upon  unstudied  passages  of  criticism,  upon 
sentences  that  give  winning  insights  into  him- 
self. In  a  long  letter  to  Peacock  from  Fer- 
rara,  in  1818,  —  a  letter  abounding  in  genial 
comments  on  the  people,  the  agriculture,  the 
climate,  the  architecture,  —  after  describing 
the  Manuscripts  of  Tasso  and  Ariosto,  finding 
in  their  handwriting  an  index  of  their  minds, 
he  adds  :  "  You  know  I  always  seek  in  what 
I  see  the  manifestation  of  something  beyond 
the  present  and  tangible  object."  In  another 
letter  to  the  same,  a  few  months  later,  from 
Naples,  he  exclaims  :  "  Oh,  if  I  had  health  and 
strength,  and  equal  spirits,  what  boundless  in- 
tellectual improvement  might  I  not  gather  in 
thi^  wonderful  country  !  At  present  I  write 
little  else  but  poetry,  and  little  of  that.  My 
first  act  of  Pronicthciis  is  complete,  and  I 
think  you  would  like  it.  I  consider  poetry 
very  subordinate  to  moral  and  political  sci- 
ence, and  if  I  were  well,  certainly  I  would  as- 
pire to  the  latter,  for  I  can  conceive  a  great 
work,  embodying  the  discoveries  of  all  ages, 
and  harmonizing  the  contending  creeds  by 
which  mankind  have  been  ruled." 

Shelley  could  not  be  idle,  being  in  this  like 
all  men  of  full  mind.     The  first  need  and  law 


SHELLEY.  ^  231 

of  life  is  motion.  The  mighty,  controlling,  cre- 
ative Spirit  works  unintermittingly.  From  this 
supreme  Light  Shelley  is  one  of  the  brightest 
emanations  ever  cast  upon  mankind.  When 
he  could  not  write  poetry  he  betook  him  to 
prose.  His  Defence  of  Poetry  is  a  masterpiece, 
a  broad,  eloquent,  subtle  essay  on  the  great- 
est of  themes.  Shelley  was  ever  a  zealous 
servant  of  the  beautiful,  the  good,  the  true. 

The  subjects  of  his  prose  essays  —  thought- 
ful fragments  —  are  among  the  most  vital  and 
highest  that  the  mind  can  grasp,  —  specula- 
tions on  morals,  on  metaphysics,  on  a  future 
state,  on  the  punishment  of  death,  on  life,  on 
love,  —  this  last  an  exquisite,  penetrating,  spir- 
itual fragment.  In  the  preface  to  his  trans- 
lation of  The  Banquet  one  learns  how  great 
is  his  admiration  of  Plato,  and  why  it  is  so 
great.  Besides  The  Banquet  he  translated  the 
Ion  and  passages  from  The  Republic.  Shelley 
was  among  the  first  to  put  into  English  verse 
several  scenes  from  Goethe's  Faust,  notably 
the  magnificent  Pivlogue  in  Heaven,  —  a  task 
which  would  likewise  have  been  poetically 
congenial  to  Coleridge,  had  he  not  been  with- 
held by  what  he  imagined  to  be  religious  rev- 
erence.    This  recalls  that  rare  stroke  of  wit 


232  SHELLEY. 

on  dear  Coleridge  by  Swinburne,  who  says  of 
some  of  the  religious  pieces  of  Coleridge  that 
they  leave  an  unpleasant  taste,  as  of  "a  rancid 
unction  of  piety." 

From  Homer  Shelley  translated  the  long 
Hymn  to  Mcrairy  of  eight  hundred  lines  ;  from 
Euripides  the  whole  of  The  Cyclops,  a  satyric 
drama  of  eight  or  nine  hundred  lines ;  from 
Dante  several  passages  ;  from  Calderon's  Ma- 
gico  Prodigioso  scenes  to  the  amount  of  seven 
or  eight  hundred  lines. 

When  speaking  of  the  mental  activity  and 
affluence  of  Shelley  his  Fragments  must  not  be 
forgotten. 

The  entire  poetic  product  of  Gray,  including 
translations  and  Latin  poems,  does  not  exceed 
two  thousand  lines  ;  and  if  were  dropped  all 
the  lines  that  owe  their  beauty  to  their  borrow- 
ings, this  number  would  be  much  reduced. 
And  Gray  lived  to  be  fifty-five,  and,  as  he  him- 
self informs  us,  was  fond  of  writing.  The 
number  of  poems  he  published  during  his  life 
was  sixteen,  making  about  one  thousand  lines. 
Now,  the  Fragments  of  Shelley,  poems  begun 
and  unfinished,  some  of  them,  like  Charles  /,, 
The  Triumph  of  Life,  and  Prince  Athanese, 
running   each   to  several  hundred  lines,  and 


SHELLEY.  233 

many  making  but  one  or  more  stanzas,  some 
of  these  unpolished  torsos,  and  many  waiting 
for  the  poet's  last  touch,  —  these  Fragments 
alone  are  ninety-seven  in  number,  and  cover 
about  four  thousand  lines,  many  of  these  lines 
loaded  with  meaning  and  poetry. 

This  mass  of  fragments,  shining  fragments, 
is  a  unique  feature  in  the  poetic  product  of 
Shelley,     None  of  his  contemporaneous  peers 
has  it,  neither  Coleridge,  nor  Wordsworth>  nor 
Byron,  nor  Keats.    As  cause  of  this  something 
may  be  attributed  to  his  life  being  a  fragment. 
It  may  be  believed  that  had  he  lived   to  three 
score,  or  even  to  two  score,  some  of  these  be- 
ginnings  would   have  been    carried   to    their 
ends,    many  of  the  shorter  bits    would  have 
been  worked  up ;  but  even  then  the  pile  would 
have  remained  large,  leaving  out  of  account  the 
additions  that  would  surely  have  been  made  to 
it  through  Shelley's  remarkable  verbal  facility, 
whereby  was   seized   and   secured   any  fresh 
thought  that  darted  to  the  surface  from  inte- 
rior depths,  or  flashed  from  without,  and  thus 
suddenest  fancies,  abruptest  suggestions,  were 
instantly  embodied,  and,    by  virtue  of  poetic 
demands,    rhythmically   embodied.       Coupled 


234  SHELLEY. 

with  this  facility,  which  all  his  rivals,  except 
Wordsworth,  shared  with  him,  there  was  in 
Shelley  an  individual  eagerness,  a  fiery  precip- 
itance, combined  with  keenest  intellectual  vig- 
ilance, that  pounced  upon  all  poetic  prey  with 
the  passionateness  of  the  tiger's  spring. 

One  can  hardly  recall  a  poet  of  the  first 
class  who  did  not  write  profusely.  Even  Mil- 
ton, who  gave  eighteen  of  his  prime  years 
wholly  to  politics  and  the  cause  of  civic  free- 
dom, left  between  fifteen  and  twenty  thousand 
lines.  Of  course  we  do  not  hereby  mean  to  im- 
ply that  the  quantity  of  verse  a  poet  produces 
is  the  measure  of  his  genius,  or  to  hint  that, 
because  Shelley,  before  he  was  thirty,  wrote 
twenty  thousand  lines,  and  Gray,  before  he 
was  fifty-five,  only  two  thousand,  Shelley  was 
ten  times  as  good  a  poet  as  Gray.  The  con- 
trast in  quantity  is  marked  only  for  the  pur- 
pose of  exhibiting  the  mental  prodigality  of 
Shelley,  —  a  prodigality  which  may  be  called 
unparalleled,  when  is  taken  into  account  the 
high  quality  of  nearly  every  page  that  he  wrote. 
Nevertheless,  Shelley  and  Gray  do  stand  in 
expressive  aesthetic  contrast  to  each  other,  — 
Gray  representing  the  class  of   writers  who 


SHELLEY.  235 

laboriously  compose  poetry,  drawing  their  ma- 
terial chiefly  from  without;  Shelley  represent- 
ing the  class  of  spontaneous  poets,  who  draw 
their  material  chiefly  from  within,  their  souls 
being  fresh,  deep  fountains  of  thought  and 
poetry. 


VII. 

Since  their  arrival  in  Italy  Shelley  and  his 
wife  had  moved  about,  dwelling  only  for  a  few 
months  in  one  place,  —  at  the  baths  of  Lucca, 
at  Este  near  Venice,  at  Florence,  at  Naples,  at 
Rome,  leading  in  each  place  a  secluded  life. 
This  continued  isolation  did  not  suit  Shelley, 
fond  as  he  was  of  solitude,  and  it  was  oppress- 
ive to  Mary,  who  had  a  healthy  liking  for  so- 
cial company.  In  the  beginning  of  1820  they 
established  themselves  at  Pisa.  Here  they 
had  around  them  a  limited  but  congenial  cir- 
cle. Medwin,  a  cousin  of  Shelley,  was  for  a 
time  a  guest  in  their  house.  With  Williams 
and  Jane,  his  wife,  there  grew  up  an  intimacy, 
Shelley  and  Williams  boated  together,  and  to 
Jane  were  addressed  several  sweet  poems, 
among  them  the  one  beginning  "Ariel  to  Mi- 
randa." Trelawney,  manly,  clear-headed  Tre- 
lawney,  became  a  valuable  friend  to  Shelley. 
Byron,  partly  to  be  near  Shelley,  hired  the 
finest  palace  in  Pisa.  The  noted  Italian  sur- 
geon, Vacca,  was  an  acquaintance.     The  fa- 


SHELLEY.  237 

moLis  Greek  chief,  Mavrocordato,  visited  Shel- 
ley and  inspired  him  to  write  Hellas.  But  the 
Pisan  acquaintance  of  whom  the  poet  has  left 
the  deepest  record  was  a  young  Italian  girl. 
To  her  the  world  owes  one  of  Shelley's  most 
beautiful,  most  passionate  poems,  Epipsychi- 
dion. 

Emilia  Viviani  was  shut  up  in  a  convent  by 
her  father  until  he  should  have  chosen  for 
her  a  husband.  Shelley,  whose  noble  heart 
was  ever  open  to  sympathy  for  any  form  of 
oppression,  was  taken  to  see  Emilia,  and  was 
fascinated  by  a  loveliness  so  extraordinary  that 
she  seemed  to  be  the  realization  of  even  his 
ideal  of  feminine  beauty.  He  took  Mary  to 
see  her.  They  got  permission  for  her  to  come 
to  them  at  times.  They  sent  her  flowers  and 
books,  for  she  had  more  culture  than  most 
Italian  girls. 

In  his  imaginative  ecstasy  Emilia  became 
to  Shelley  the  embodiment  of  that  heavenly 
dream  in  Alastor.  Her  position  as  a  victim  of 
domestic  tyranny  heightened  to  Shelley's  eyes 
the  glow  of  the  almost  unearthly  beauty  of 
Emilia.  EpipsycJiidion  is  the  subtlest  picture 
of  ideal,  uncarnal  love.  There  is  pointed  sig- 
nificance in  the  name  of  the  poem  :  it  means 


238  SHELLEY. 

of  the  soul.  The  poem  has  nothing  about  the 
body.  In  EmiHa  the  poet  loves  the  sudden 
dazzling  revelation  of  purest  poetic  imaginings. 
A  creative  mind  revels  and  triumiihs  in  the 
discovery  of  a  preconceived  radiance.  He 
calls  her  "spouse,  sister,  angel."  In  the  rela- 
tion between  Emilia  and  Shelley  there  was  Jiot 
a  shadow  of  evil ;  nay,  there  was  substantial 
good,  for  it  gave  birth  to  an  immortal  poem. 
As  for  the  "  Angel  "  herself,  she  was  soon  taken 
from  the  convent  to  be  given  to  a  sposo  of  her 
father's  choice.  In  a  few  years  she  sepa- 
rated from  her  husband,  with  her  father's  ajD- 
proval,  and  died  shortly  afterwards,  in  her  real 
marriage  j^resenting  a  sad  contrast  to  the  ideal 
union  in  the  Eden-island  so  wonderfully  de- 
scribed in  Epipsychidio7i : 

"  The  winged  storms,  chaunting  their  thunder-psalm 
To  other  lands,  leave  azure  chasms  of  calm 
Over  this  isle,  or  weep  themselves  in  dew 
From  which  its  fields  and  woods  ever  renew 
Their  green  and  golden  immortality." 

Although  the  love  of  the  poet  for  Emilia 
was  poetical  and  innocent,  and  his  wife  shared 
his  interest  in  and  admiration  of  her,  it  is 
nevertheless  not  surprising  that  EpipsycJiidion 
is  the  only  one  of  the  longer  poems  of  Shelley 


SHELLEY.  239 

to  which  Mary  has  not  written  an  explanatory 
note. 

To  Trelawney  the  world  owes  a  picture  of 
Shelley  in  the  last  year  of  his  life  drawn  by  a 
masterly  hand.  A  man  of  rare  insight  into 
his  fellow-men,  Trelawney  was  at  the  same 
time  an  artist  with  his  pen,  an  artist  the  more 
faithful  for  his  unconsciousness.  Both  of 
Shelley  and  Byron  he  has  left  a  memorial 
which  is  priceless.  His  own  manliness  and 
intelligence  captivated  both.  He  became  in- 
timate with  both,  saw  them  almost  daily  for 
several  months.  One  day,  a  few  weeks  only 
after  his  arrival  in  Pisa,  talking  with  Shelley 
of  Byron,  Shelley  cried  out  to  his  wife  :  "  Mary, 
Trelawney  has  found  out  Byron  already.  How 
stupid  we  were  —  how  long  it  took  us." 

On  the  23d  of  February,  1821,  died  at  Rome, 
in  his  twenty-fifth  year,  John  Keats.  In  the 
previous  autumn,  Shelley,  hearing  of  his  pur- 
posed journey  to  Italy,  had  invited  Keats  to 
stay  with  him.  In  May,  1821,  Shelley  wrote 
his  great  elegy  on  Keats,  Adojiais. 

In  another  volume  (^Bricf  Essays  and  Brev- 
ities') I  have  ventured  to  call  Adonais  the  finest 
elegy  in  literature.  The  subject  of  Adonais  is 
far  higher  and    richer   than  that  of  Lycidas. 


240  SHELLEY. 

Young  King,  the  subject  of  Milton's  monody, 
owes  his  immortality  entirely  to  Milton.  Keats 
is  the  peer  of  the  immortal  Shelley.  The  men- 
tal power  of  Keats,  his  wrongs,  the  resplendent 
group  of  jDoets  about  him,  all  these  demand  a 
wider  range  of  thought,  a  deeper  movement, 
more  tearful  griefs,  and  these  demands  are  all 
met  with  the  sweep  and  glow  of  intellectual 
and  poetic  mastership.  In  comparison  with 
the  heights  and  deeps  of  Adonais,  Lycidas  is 
superficial,  with  an  air  of  elegant  convention- 
ality. Every  one  of  the  fifty-five  Spenserian 
stanzas,  making  four  hundred  and  ninety-five 
lines,  quivers  with  fervor  :  Lycidas,  with  its 
one  hundred  and  ninety-three  lines  is  com- 
paratively cold.  A  curious  coincidence  it  is, 
that  at  the  time  of  writing  Lycidas  and  Adon- 
ais Milton  and  Shelley  were  each  in  his 
twenty-ninth  year,  while  King  and  Keats  were 
each  in  his  twenty-fifth. 

The  sustained  splendor  of  Adonais  is  aston- 
ishing. Fifty-five  Spenserian  stanzas,  each  a 
new  bar  of  musical  thought,  each  resting,  to 
the  eye  on,  and  to  the  ear  supported  by,  the 
rhythmic  strength  of  the  final  Alexandrine ; 
each  as  fresh  and  original  as  a  succession  of 
May  mornings,  every  one  of  which  seems  to 


SHELLEY.  241 

surpass  the  preceding  in  the  glittering  beauty 
of  its  auroral  dewiness ;  all  glorified  by  the 
mysterious  creative  life  out  of  which  spring 
the  earth  and  the  stars.  The  soul  of  Shelley 
was  an  exhaustless  deep  of  beautiful  thought. 
His  imaginations  are  as  poetic  as  they  are 
abundant.  Here  is  the  fourteenth  stanza,  not 
more  poetical  and  melodious  than  others,  only, 
from  its  subject,  more  condensed : 

"  All  he  had  loved,  and  moulded  into  thought, 
From  shape,  and  hue,  and  odour,  and  sweet  sound, 
Lamented  Adonais.     Morning  sought 
Her  eastern  watch-tower,  and  her  hair  unbound, 
Wet  with  the  tears  which  should  adorn  the  ground, 
Dimmed  the  aerial  eyes  that  kindle  day  ; 
Afar  the  melancholy  thunder  moaned. 
Pale  Ocean  in  unquiet  slumber  lay. 
And  the  wild  winds  flew  round,  sobbing  in  their  dismay." 

The  fineness  and  freshness  of  Shelley's 
poetic  invention  is  nowhere  more  effectively 
exhibited  than  where  he  represents  "  the  quick 
Dreams  "  mourning  round  the  body  of  Keats. 
No  one  knew  better  than  Shelley  what  a  gift 
to  the  poet  —  it  might  be  called  his  capital 
outfit — is  the  power  of  day-dreaming.  Take 
these  two  stanzas  ;  they  are  typical  of  Shelley, 
so  new,  so  springy,  so  laden  with  musical 
mind,  so  inwardly  lucent : 
16 


242  SHELLEY. 


"  O,  weep  for  Adonais  !  —  The  quick  Dreams, 
The  passion-winged  Ministers  of  thought, 
Who  were  his  flocks,  whom  near  the  living  streams 
Of  his  young  spirit  he  fed,  and  whom  he  taught 
The  love  which  was  its  music,  wander  not, — 
Wander  no  more,  from  kindling  brain  to  brain. 
But  droop  there,  whence  they  sprung  ;  and  mourn  their  lot 
Round  the  cold  heart,  where,  after  their  sweet  pain. 

They  ne'er  will  gather  strength,  or  find  a  home  again. 


"And  one  with  trembling  hands  clasps  his  cold  head, 
And  fans  him  with  her  moonlight  wings,  and  cries  : 

-   '  Our  love,  our  hope,  our  sorrow,  is  not  dead ; 
See,  on  the  silken  fringe  of  his  faint  eyes. 
Like  dew  upon  a  sleeping  flower,  there  lies 
A  tear  some  Dream  has  loosened  from  his  brain.' 
Lost  Angel  of  a  ruined  Paradise  ! 
She  knew  not 't  was  her  own  ;  as  with  no  stain 

She  faded,  like  a  cloud  which  had  outwept  its  rain." 

A  poet  is  great  in  proportion  as  out  of  in- 
ward resources  he  throws  light  on  nature  and 
man,  —  a  new  light,  because  kindled  at  a  new 
poetic  flame.  By  this  recreative  illumination 
man  and  nature  are  transfigured,  and  thence 
are  seen  more  vividly,  because  seen  more  in 
their  reality,  that  is,  in  their  spiritual  being. 
Hence,  the  poet's  pictures  and  expositions  are 
true  and  distinct  and  beautiful  and  significant, 


SHELLEY.  243 

not  according  to  the  grandeur  and  variety  of 
men  and  scenery  his  outward  eyes  have  rested 
on,  but  according  to  the  variety  and  fullness  of 
his  interior  wealth  of  sensibility.  A  great  poet 
is  a  new  man,  —  a  new  radiant  man.  Such 
is  Shelley,  and  nowhere  is  his  radiance  more 
new  and  warming  than  in  Adonais.  Here  are 
three  more  stanzas,  ever  abloom  with  poetic 
soul.  Sixty  years  ago  it  was  a  high,  imagina- 
tive leap,  a  prophetic  cry,  to  exclaim,  *'  'T  is 
Death  is  dead,  not  he." 


"  Peace,  peace  !  he  is  not  dead,  he  doth  not  sleep  — 
He  hath  awakened  from  the  dream  of  life  — 
'T  is  we,  who,  lost  in  stormy  visions,  keep 
With  phantoms  an  unprofitable  strife, 
And  in  mad  trance,  strike  with  our  spirit's  knife 
Invulnerable  nothings.  —  We  decay 
Like  corpses  in  a  charnel ;  fear  and  grief 
Convulse  us  and  consume  us  day  by  day, 

And  cold  hopes  swarm  like  worms  within  our  living  clay. 


"  He  has  outsoared  the  shadow  of  our  night ; 
Envy  and  calumny  and  hate  and  pain, 
And  that  unrest  which  men  miscall  delight. 
Can  touch  him  not  and  torture  not  again  ; 
From  the  contagion  of  the  world's  slow  stain 
He  is  secure,  and  now  can  never  mourn 
A  heart  grown  cold,  a  head  grown  gray  in  vain  j 


244 


SHELLEY. 


Nor,  when  the  spirit's  self  has  ceased  to  burn. 
With  sparkless  ashes  load  an  unlamented  urn. 


"  He  lives,  he  wakes  —  't  is  Death  is  dead,  not  he ; 
Mourn  not  for  Adonais.  —  Thou  young  Dawn 
Turn  all  thy  dew  to  splendour,  for  from  thee 
The  spirit  thou  lamentest  is  not  gone  ; 
Ye  caverns  and  ye  forests,  cease  to  moan ! 
Cease  ye  faint  flowers  and  fountains,  and  thou  Air, 
Which  like  a  mourning  veil  thy  scarf  hadst  thrown 
O'er  the  abandoned  Earth,  now  leave  it  bare 

Even  to  the  joyous  stars  which  smile  on  its  despair  !  " 

Whoever  has  enough  poetic  susceptibiHty  to 
read  and  study  Adonais  will^  be  able,  through 
its  stanzas,  —  so  alight  are  they  with  spiritual 
imaginativeness,  —  better  than  through  almost 
any  other  pages,  to  get  down  to  the  founda- 
tions of  poetry,  to  inhale  its  aromatic  essence, 
to  finger,  as  it  were,  its  very  roots. 

Four  stanzas  of  Adonais  are  given  by  Shel- 
ley to  himself.  Nor  are  the  wonderful  stanzas 
thus  dedicated  in  the  least  stained  with  vanity 
or  egoism.  Appropriate,  inevitable,  imperative 
was  it  that  these  few  stanzas  should  be  given 
to  him 

"  Who  in  another's  fate  now  wept  his  own." 

That  he  did  so,   deepens  the  pathos  of  this 
great   poem.     These  autobiographical  thirty- 


SHELLEY.  245 

six  lines  are  a  peerless  Elegy  on  himself  by 
the  great  poet,  a  self-portraiture  touching  and 
powerful.    This  is  the  last  of  the  four  stanzas : 


"  AH  stood  aloof,  and  at  his  partial  moan 

Smiled  through  their  tears  ;  well  knew  that  gentle  band 

Who  in  another's  fate  now  wept  his  own ; 

As  in  the  accents  of  an  unknown  land, 

He  sung  new  sorrow ;  sad  Urania  scanned 

The  Stranger's  mien,  and  murmured  :  '  Who  art  thou  ?' 

He  answered  not,  but  with  a  sudden  hand 

Made  bare  his  branded  and  ensanguined  brow, 
Which  was   like  Cain's   or  Christ's  —  Oh !   that  it  should 
be  so ! " 

It  were  easy  to  go  on  for  pages  in  this  strain 
of  eulogy,  for  each  stanza  vibrates  with  feeling 
embalmed  in  the  fragrance  of  the  beautiful. 

The  last  stanzas  are  laden  with  the  weird 
monitions  of  the  seer.  Deep  sympathy  with 
man  makes  the  thoughtful  poet  prophetic. 

Shelley  loved  to  dally  with  Death  :  he  was 
fond  of  peering  over  the  fence  that  separates 
man  from  the  angels.  He  could  not  swim. 
One  day,  bathing  with  Trelawney  in  the  Arno, 
he  got  into  deep  water.  Trelawney  plunged 
after  him  and  found  him  lying  on  the  bottom, 
making  no  effort  to  save  himself.     When  he 


246  SHELLEY. 

recovered  his  breath,  he  said  :  "  I  always  find 
the  bottom  of  the  well,  and  they  say  Truth  lies 
there.  In  another  minute  I  should  have  found 
it,  and  you  would  have  found  an  empty  shell. 
It  is  an  easy  way  of  getting  rid  of  the  body." 
Trelawney  narrates  with  great  vividness  what 
on  another  occasion  occurred  in  a  frail  little 
boat  with  Jane  (Mrs.  Williams)  and  her  two 
children,  when  a  woman's  tact  and  presence  of 
mind  turned  Shelley  away  from  the  thought 
of  "solving  the  great  mystery."  The  whole 
narrative  —  too  long  for  this  page  —  is  strik- 
ingly illustrative  of  Shelley  in  one  of  his  fear- 
fully inquisitive  moods. 

In  the  fifty-second  stanza  of  Adonais  he  ex- 
claims, 

"Die, 

If  thou  wouldst  be  with  that  which  thou  dost  seek  I 
Follow  where  all  is  fled  ! " 

The  next  three  stanzas  conclude  the  poem : 


"  Why  linger,  why  turn  back,  why  shrink,  my  Heart  ? 
Thy  hopes  are  gone  before  :  from  all  things  here 
They  have  departed ;  thou  shouldst  now  depart ! 
A  light  is  past  from  the  revolving  year, 
And  man,  and  woman  ;  and  what  still  is  dear 
Attracts  to  crush,  repels  to  make  thee  wither. 
The  soft  sky  smiles,  —  the  low  wind  whispers  near; 


SHELLEY.  247 

'  T  is  Adonais  calls  !  oh,  hasten  thither, 
No  more  let  Life  divide  what  Death  can  join  together. 


"That  Light  whose  smile  kindles  the  Universe, 
That  Beauty  in  which  all  things  work  and  move. 
That  Benediction  which  the  eclipsing  Curse 
Of  birth  can  quench  not,  that  sustaining  Love 
Which  through  the  web  of  being  blindly  wove 
By  man  and  beast  and  earth  and  air  and  sea, 
Burns  bright  or  dim,  as  each  are  mirrors  of 
The  fire  for  which  all  thirst ;  now  beams  on  me. 
Consuming  the  last  clouds  of  cold  mortality. 


"  The  breath  whose  might  I  have  invoked  in  song 
Descends  on  me ;  my  spirit's  bark  is  driven. 
Far  from  the  shore,  far  from  the  trembling  throng 
Whose  sails  were  never  to  the  tempest  given ; 
The  massy  earth  and  sphered  skies  are  riven  ! 
I  am  borne  darkly,  fearfully,  afar; 
Whilst  burning  through  the  inmost  veil  of  Heaven, 
The  soul  of  Adonais,  like  a  star, 
Beacons  from  the  abode  where  the  Eternal  are." 

And  now  it  is  time  to  conclude  this  Study, 
so  unsatisfactory  in  its  incompleteness,  and 
yet  attractive  through  its  loving  fullness  of 
Shelley.  Is  he  idealized  in  these  insufficient 
pages  }  Who  can  write  faithfully  about  Shel- 
ley without  giving  into  idealization .-'  Happy 
if  he  can  reach  up  to  him  even  then,  for  he 
was   an    ideality,   a   great    ideal   reality.     In 


248  SHELLEY. 

Studying  and  getting  intimate  with  Shelley, 
while  one's  mind  is  delightfully  exercised, 
one's  idea  of  humanity  is  elevated  and  deep- 
ened. He  was  a  man  from  whose  soul  sweet- 
est emanations,  loftiest  aspirings,  were  as  pro- 
fusely thrown  out  as  are  the  spring's  blossoms 
that  fail  not  to  issue  in  savory  fruit.  To  build 
his  core  the  true,  the  good,  the  beautiful,  were 
fragrantly  interlinked,  the  bond  among  them 
kept  ever  willing  and  flexible  by  the  warmth 
of  love. 

In  Genevra,  a  poem  of  about  two  hundred 
lines,  written  in  1821,  the  year  before  Shelley 
passed  from  the  earth,  there  seems  to  me  to 
be  more,  than  in  any  other  of  his  works,  of 
what  is  a  characteristic  of  Shelley,  —  at  once 
a  mark  and  source  of  his  greatness,  —  a  rich 
plenitude  of  mind,  pointing  to  an  infinitude 
of  power.  Feeling  evokes  feeling,  thought 
awakens  thought,  and  they  leap  forth  nimbly 
as  if  rejoicing  to  get  out  of  an  overcrowded 
brain.  Out  of  this  copiousness  are  great 
poems  born,  such  as  are  many  of  Shelley's. 
Among  them  all,  preeminent  in  pathos,  in  po- 
etic lightning,  in  moral  might,  is  Genevra. 

Were  not  the  ocean  so  wide  and  deep,  re- 
freshing, fructifying  rains  would  fail  us.    Only 


SHELLEY.  249 

deep,  full  sensibilities  beget  poetic  deeps,  of 
which,  therefore,  there  are  far  more  in  Shelley 
than  in  Byron.  Byron,  talking  one  day  with 
Shelley  and  Trelawney,  told  them  that  Murray 
(the  publisher)  advised  him  to  go  back  to  his 
"Corsair  style  to  please  the  ladies."  Shelley 
repelled  the  advice  indignantly,  and  added : 
"Write  nothing  but  what  your  conviction  of 
its  truth  inspires  you  to  write  ;  you  should 
give  counsel  to  the  wise,  not  take  it  from  the 
foolish.  Time  will  reverse  the  judgment  of 
the  vulgar.  Contemporary  criticism  only  rep- 
resents the  amount  of  ignorance  genius  has  to 
contend  with." 

Besides  Hellas,  a  lyrical  drama  of  thirteen  or 
fourteen  hundred  lines,  Shelley  wrote  in  1821, 
including  Adonais  and  Genevra,  about  twelve 
hundred  lines  in  minor  poems.  All  of  these, 
like  the  poems  of  all  his  years,  are  written  from 
within,  —  this  is  the  source  of  their  power ; 
and  nearly  all  were  inspired  by  love,  and  this 
gives  warmth  to  their  beauty.  The  Hymn  to 
Intellectual  Beauty  ends  with  these  lines  : 

"  Thus  let  thy  power,  which  like  the  truth 
Of  nature  on  my  passive  youth 
Descended,  to  my  onward  life  supply 

Its  calm  —  to  one  who  worships  thee, 
And  every  form  containing  thee, 


250  SHELLEY. 

Whom,  Spirit  fair,  thy  spells  did  bind 
To  fear  himself,  and  love  all  human  kind." 

Between  this  great  Hymn,  written  in  his 
twenty-fourth  year,  and  Gencvra,  written  in  his 
twenty-ninth,  lie  inclosed  Mont  Blanc,  Lines 
written  among  the  Enganian  Hills,  Julian 
and  Maddalo,  Stanzas  written  in  Dejection 
near  Naples,  Ode  to  the  West  Wind,  The  Sen- 
sitive Pla7it,  To  a  Skylark,  Ode  to  Liberty, 
EpipsycJiidion,  The  Witch  of  Atlas,  Hymn  of 
Apollo,  Ode  to  Naples,  Adonais,  and  others 
hardly  less  good,  but  shorter,  besides  such 
great  fragments  as  The  Triumph  of  Life  and 
Prince  Athanese.  Add  to  these  The  Cenci  and 
his  other  long  poems  already  noticed,  and  it 
may  be  asked,  Do  the  poems  of  any  one  of 
his  illustrious  contemporaries  attain  to  such 
uniformity  of  excellence  ?  Nay,  when  are  re- 
called the  five  or  six  best  of  the  above-named 
poems,  and  how  in  them  the  finest  poetic 
essence  is  breathed  through  most  musically 
rhythmic  forms,  the  intense  life  of  fresh  sub- 
stance rounded  into  blooming  gracefulness, 
and  how,  above  all,  is  notable  the  glowing  fu- 
sion of  all  the  parts  into  rapid  continuity,  — 
an  especial  token  this  of  creative  life  in  the 
soul  that  feeds  the  flow  of  lustrous  words,  — 


SHELLEY.  251 

when  all  this  is  before  us,  may  we  not  ask,  not 
whether  Wordsworth  or  Coleridge  or  Byron 
or  Keats  has  surpassed  Shelley  in  the  degree 
of  poetic  excellence  reached,  but  has  any  one 
of  them  quite  equalled  him  ? 

Spontaneity,  fervor,  sincerity,  close  clinging 
together  of  thought,  feeling,  and  diction,  give 
to  each  stanza  of  Adonais,  of  the  Ode  to  the 
West  Wind,  the  Skylark,  Hymn  of  Apollo,  and 
to  every  sentence  of  EpipsycJiidion  and  of  Ge- 
nevra,  a  buoyancy  like  that  of  his  own  mount- 
ing lark, 

"  As  from  thy  presence  showers  a  rain  of  melody," 

while  the  united  stanzas  or  paragraphs  of  each 
poem  build  a  whole  as  compact  and  Surely  or- 
ganized as  a  swift  joyous  flight  of  wild-fowl 
high  up  towards  heaven,  held  together  in 
wedge-like  symmetry  by  the  invisible  cords  of 
divine  love  kindled  in  each  of  them  by  the  cre- 
ative fire  which  warms  the  Universe  into  one- 
ness, each  poem,  by  this  vital  concord  with 
consecrated  nature,  exhibiting  a  consumma- 
tion of  winged  Art. 

The  richer  and  deeper  the  nature  the  more 
time  is  needed  for  its  full  earthly  unfolding. 
Shelley,  on  the  day  of  his  drowning,  wanted 


252  SHELLEY. 

twenty-seven  days  to  have  reached  the  end  of 
his  thirtieth  year.  The  poetic  product  of  even 
Shakespeare,  before  his  thirty-first  year,  was 
not  so  vast  and  valuable  as  that  of  Shelley, 
certainly  not  so  various  and  matured.  Such 
maturity  may  be  a  sign  of  rapid  development, 
as  it  was  with  Byron,  who  at  thirty-four  had 
done  his  best  in  poetry.  It  may  be  thought 
that  at  thirty  Shelley  had  scaled  the  summit 
of  his  poetic  elevation.  But  that  he  was  in 
the  full  swing  of  growth  is  proved  by  the 
closer  tissue,  the  firmer  handling,  in  Adotiais, 
in  The  Cenci,  in  Epipsychidion,  in  Genevra. 
When  we  consider  his  temperate  habits  (he 
was  a  water-drinker  and  vegetarian),  and  that 
his  health  was  stronger  in  his  latest  year  than 
in  several  years  before ;  that  he  was  ever  as- 
piring, never  vulgarly  ambitious  ;  that  he  was 
quickened  by  a  divine  sense  of  the  beautiful 
which  the  purity  of  his  nature  and  his  life 
kept  ever  acute ;  that  all  this  was  conspicuous 
in  his  latter  verse ;  that  his  chief  love  —  he  was 
a  man  of  many  loves  —  was  the  love  of  truth, 
truth  the  resistless  leader,  the  self-renewing 
spring  of  life  and  new  power,  —  when  we  con- 
sider all  this,  we  can  but  believe  that,  had 
Shelley  lived  a  score  of  years  longer,  his  rich, 


SHELLEY.  253 

chaste  mind  would  have  gained  a  more  nervous 
grasp  of  human  life,  a  tighter  hold  of  the  act- 
ual, through  the  warmth  of  experience,  and 
that  many  more  of  his  sentences  would  have 
become  marrowy  with  that  wisdom  which  is 
the  fruit  of  marriage  between  illuminated  ide- 
alism and  heartiest  realism. 

This  was  not  to  be.  On  the  8th  of  July, 
1822,  he  and  his  friend  Williams  went  down 
in  the  beautiful  Bay  of  Spezzia,  whether  by 
the  foundering  of  their  boat  in  the  night- 
storm,  or  by  her  being  run  into  by  a  felucca, 
is  not  certainly  ascertained.  When  Shelley's 
body  was  found  his  hand  still  clutched  a  vol- 
ume of  -iEschylus,  and  in  his  coat  pocket  was 
a  volume  of  Keats  just  lent  him  by  Leigh 
Hunt,  who  had  arrived  at  Leghorn  a  few  days 
before. 

In  a  small  band  of  rare  distinction  was 
made  a  chasm,  the  width  and  depth  of  which 
the  warmest  friend  of  Shelley  could  not  have 
foreseen,  much  as  he  was  valued  and  loved. 
Retiring,  undemonstrative,  never  self-seeking, 
he  was  yet  the  soul  of  the  circle.  His  coming 
was  always  the  awakener  of  bright  expecta- 
tion, even  more  on  account  of  the  sweetness 
and  unselfishness  of  his  nature  and  manners, 


254  SHELLEY. 

than  of  the  brilliancy  of  his  talk.  Byron  said 
of  Shelley  :  "  A  more  perfect  gentleman  never 
crossed  a  drawing-room."  When  the  tall, 
thin  figure  of  this  gentleman,  —  scholar,  poet, 
thinker,  friend,  with  his  mobile,  boy-like  coun- 
tenance, his  abundant  wavy  hair,  and  large 
blue  eyes  agleam  with  the  latent  lightnings 
of  poetry,  a  benediction  to  all  mankind  behind 
his  expressive  features,  —  whenever  he  glided 
in  among  his  friends,  his  presence  was  a  joyful 
animation. 

When  assurance  of  their  loss  came  home  to 
all  hearts  there  was  wild  desolation.  Leigh 
Hunt  wept  and  could  not  be  comforted ;  he 
felt  like  a  lone  one  from  whose  side  had  just 
been  snatched  a  whole  family  of  brothers. 
The  pallid  countenance  of  Byron  grew  paler, 
and  his  cynical  lips  quivered.  Even  the  stout- 
hearted Trelawney  trembled.  The  suddenly 
widowed  mothers,  Mary  and  Jane,  sobbed  con- 
vulsively in  one  another's  arms,  and  threw 
themselves  in  agony  upon  their  orphan  chil- 
dren. Mary  was  left  suddenly  in  the  dark : 
the  light  of  her  life  had  been  quenched.  All 
about  her,  where  there  had  been  bright  illu- 
mination, was  thick  gloom.  And  yet  for  her, 
as  for  every  human  being  in  utmost  extremity, 


SHELLEY.  255 

there  was  a  possible  consolation.  When  there 
should  come  a  lull  in  the  storm  of  her  grief,  it 
might  have  been  whispered  to  her  : 

Oh,  wherefore  weep  for  Percy !  he  is  not  dead  ! 
The  thunder-cloud  and  wind  he  loved,  and  sea, 
Have  borne  his  body  to  its  earthen  bed 
Of  elemental  life,  while  thankful,  he 
Springing  agaze  into  the  immensity 
Where  his  creative  thought  aye  joyed  to  roam, 
His  being  aglow  with  livelier  life,  and  free 
From  fleshly  bonds  and  bars  and  fretted  foam, 
A  raptured  angel  is  he  in  his  heavenly  home. 


GOETHE. 


■7 


TO  GOETHE. 

Teutonic  leader,  —  in  the  foremost  file 
Of  that  picked  corps,  whose  rapture  't  is  to  feel 
With  subtler  closer  sense  all  woe  and  weal. 
And  forge  the  feeling  into  rhythmic  pile 
Of  words,  so  tuned  they  sing  the  sigh  and  smile 
Of  all  humanity,  — meek  did'st  thou  kneel 
At  Nature's  pious  altars,  midst  the  peal 
Of  prophet-organs,  thy  great  self  the  while 
All  ear  and  eye,  thou  greatest  of  the  band, 
Whose  voices  waked  their  brooding  Luther-land, 
At  last  left  lone  in  Weimar,  famed  through  thee, 
Wearing  with  stately  grace  thy  triple  crown 
Of  science,  statesmanship,  and  poesy. 
Enrobed  in  age  and  love  and  rare  renown. 


GOETHE.^ 


Germany,  in  her  twenty  centuries  of  vigor- 
ous life,  has  been  rich  in  men,  many  of  them 
men  in  whom  fermented  so  much  of  the  finer 
marrow  of  humanity,  that  their  individual  being 
and  doing  was  the  flaming  of  a  light,  strong 
enough  to  be  a  new  illumination,  not  to  Ger- 
many merely,  but  to  Christendom.  Of  this 
effulgent  class  of  Germans  there  is  but  one 
man  whose  life-work  exercised,  and  exercises, 
a  wider  and  more  liberating  influence  on  the 
thought  of  the  civilized  world  than  John  Wolf- 
gang Goethe.  That  sublime  single  one  is 
Martin  Luther.  And  the  chief  glory  of  Luther 
is,  that  he  created  the  conditions,  moral  and 
intellectual,  that  made  a  Goethe  possible. 

Goethe  was  a  great  poet.  This  is  why  we 
are  assembled  here  to-day  to  do  him  honor. 

1  Address  delivered  before  the  Goethe  Club  of  the  city  of 
New  York,  January  lo,  1877. 


262  GOETHE. 

A  great  poet  is  a  great  power  among  men  ;  he 
is  —  what  no  other  great  man  is,  however  val- 
ued—  the  personal  friend,  the  intimate,  the 
bosom  friend,  of  every  man.  In  our  hearts  he 
makes  himself  a  place,  and  from  that  place  he 
warms  us,  he  expands  and  refines  our  being : 
this  is  his  heavenly  privilege.  And  Goethe 
is  much  else.  Wordsworth  is  a  great  poet, 
so  is  Shelley,  and  this  is  surely  enough ;  but 
they  are  nothing  besides.  Shakespeare  is  the 
greatest  of  poets ;  but  from  him  we  have  only 
poems.  Save  what  we  can  infer  from  his  po- 
etry we  know  hardly  anything  of  him.  These 
poems,  to  be  sure,  are  the  richest  literary  be- 
quest ever  left  to  mankind,  a  legacy  which  can- 
not be  wasted,  a  possession  which  cannot  be 
alienated,  through  all  the  ages  a  grant  to  every 
one  who  chooses  to  accept  it,  a  gain  of  hght 
for  guidance,  an  intellectually  spiritual  gift  to 
every  one  who  will  reach  out  to  take  it,  to  the 
world  an  inextinguishable  illumination,  an  un- 
ceasing beneficence,  a  force  in  every  soul,  a 
divine  presence  whose  blessing  is  ever  upon 
us,  especially  upon  us  this  evening  when  we 
are  met  to  talk  together  of  his  mighty  com- 
peer, second  only  to  him. 

Goethe  was  a  chief  favorite  of  fortune.    This 


GOETHE.  263 

form  of  speech  we  use  because  it  is  not  given 
to  us  to  delve  into  mysterious  sources  and  be- 
hold the  interior  workings  of  the  immeasura- 
ble, invisible,  supervisive  power,  whose  action 
is  the  order  and  law  of  our  earthly  world. 
Fortunate  was  Goethe  in  the  time  of  his  birth, 
the  very  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
when  Europe,  agitated  as  never  before  by 
mental  movement,  was  beginning  to  heave 
with  the  throes  that  were  soon  to  burst  forth 
in  fearful  revolution.  Fortunate  in  his  par- 
ents, each  a  strongly  marked  individuality ;  the 
father,  devoted  to  acquirement,  —  intellectual, 
methodical,  orderly,  precise,  a  little  stern  in  the 
enforcement  of  rules ;  the  mother,  cheerful, 
practical,  genial,  mobile,  with  the  intuitions  of 
the  best  womanhood.  Fortunate  was  he  in 
meeting  with  the  young  Duke  of  Weimar,  and 
most  fortunate  in  the  character  and  capacity 
of  the  Duke,  and  equally  fortunate  in  the 
character  and  capacity  of  the  noble  Duchess, 
Louise  of  Darmstadt,  his  consort.  But  the 
chief  favoritism  was  the  gift  to  him  of  the  fire 
of  genius,  which  enlivened  and  made  produc- 
tive a  potent  intellect  and  a  rich  sensibility. 

This  union  of  genius  with  mental  solidity 
and  versatility,  this  inward  fire  warming  great 


264  GOETHE. 

inward  resources,  would  have  made  Goethe  a 
distinguished  man  anywhere  at  any  period. 
Stijl  his  own  principle  holds  good,  that  the 
Artist,  for  his  unfolding,  requires  favorable 
conditions.  A  Statesman,  a  military  chief, 
is  necessarily  dependent  on  outward  events ; 
much  more  the  Artist,  who  is  an  Artist  partly 
through  his  openness  to  impressions  from  with- 
out. To  be  an  artist  a  man  must  be  of  more 
than  common  sensibility,  of  quick  impressibil- 
ity ;  he  must  be  one  who,  through  the  poetic, 
the  supreme  gift,  projects  out  of  himself,  in 
forms  of  beauty,  conceptions  and  visions,  the 
material  for  these  forms  being  supplied  by  a 
keen  perception  of  and  warm  susceptibility  to 
what  is  present,  what  is  around  him,  what  is 
before  his  senses.  The  young  Goethe,  palpi- 
tating with  this  susceptibility,  was  a  many- 
sided  mirror  in  the  midst  of  an  insurrection- 
ary world,  a  beautifying  mirror,  on  which 
struck,  to  be  poetically  reflected,  its  scenes 
and  passions.  His  was  a  large  soul,  yearning 
in  its  depths  with  all  the  mysterious  feeling  of 
a  prolific  epoch,  —  a  fresh  clear  mind,  a  vast 
mind,  passionate,  reflective,  creative,  with  the 
power,  and  the  unconscious  impulse,  to  give 
voice  to  the  wants  and  feelings  of  an  impas- 
sioned age. 


GOE  THE.  265 

Time  and  place  were  propitious;  and  so, 
in  Goethe's  twenty-third  year,  Goetz  von  Ber- 
lichingen  burst  into  life,  Goetz  with  the  iron 
hand,  a  protesting  shout  against  the  tyranny 
of  custom,  a  defiant  assertion  of  individual  in- 
deiDendence,  a  revolutionary  shock  to  litera- 
ture, a  tearing  up  of  worn  dramatic  highways, 
a  startling  new  phenomenon.  Right  upon 
Goetz  came  Werther,  which  may  be  called  a 
musical  shriek  of  despair,  a  shriek  that  sent  a 
thrill  through  the  heart  of  Germany,  of  Eu- 
rope. Suddenly,  with  two  bounds,  the  young 
giant  leapt  into  a  great  renown. 

This  renown  brought  him  into  contact  with 
Karl  August,  Duke  of  Weimar.  Goethe  was 
twenty-six  when  he  went  to  Weimar.  On  the 
invitation  of  the  Duke  he  came  to  spend  a  few 
weeks  :  he  staid  fifty-seven  years.  He  began 
by  leading  the  gay,  wild  court  life  of  fun  and 
frolic,  led  by  a  young  sovereign  full  of  force 
and  animal  spirits,  and  not  yet  out  of  his  teens  : 
he  remained  to  teach  the  Duke  how  to  work 
and  how  to  govern.  He  began,  the  centre  of 
an  admiring  circle  of  waltzers  :  he  ended  by 
being  the  head  of  a  band  of  workers,  scientific, 
artistic,  political  workers,  who  wrought  the 
Duchy  of  Weimar  into  the  brighest  domain  of 


266  GOETHE. 

Germany.  He  came  as  a  temporary,  spark- • 
ling  guest :  he  remained  as  a  permanent,  solid 
benefactor. 

The  opening  season,  the  first  decade,  of 
Goethe's  living  and  doing  in  Weimar  presents 
a  unique  picture  of  what  a  young  man  can 
perform,  —  a  performance,  in  this  case,  which 
if  not  so  imposing  as  that  of  the  young  Napo- 
leon in  the  first  ten  adult  years  of  his  wonder- 
ful career,  is  more  spiritually  instructive  as  an 
example,  and  more  valuable  in  its  practical 
bearings.  The  Duke,  fascinated  by  the  talk 
and  demeanor  of  him  whom  Wieland  called 
"  the  godlike  splendid  youth,"  as  others  were 
fascinated,  as  Wieland  himself  was,  and  the 
dowager-Duchess  and  Duchess  Louise,  and  all 
the  Court,  the  Duke  soon  began  to  feel  the 
deeper  attraction  of  Goethe's  mind  and  char- 
acter, and  to  perceive  how  useful  Goethe 
might  be  to  him,"  —  a  perception  sharpened,  if 
not  originated,  by  growing  attachment  to  his 
young  friend,  who,  so  young,  was  seven  years 
older  than  himself.  Karl  August  was  a  pro- 
gressive man,  one  not  afraid  of  new  ideas,  new 
discoveries,  new  principles.  Men  of  aspiration 
and  of  culture,  and  of  confident  readiness  to 
grasp  fresh  thought  and  to  recognize  its  e.\- 


GOETHE.  267 

pansive  potency,  such  men  are  stamped  by 
nature  with  superiority  ;  they  are  the  elite 
among  their  fellows. 

The  Duke  and  Goethe  began  by  playing  to- 
gether :  very  soon  they  took  to  working  to- 
gether, and  the  Duke,  with  that  rare  insight 
and  judgment  which  quickly  discern  and  ap- 
preciate greatness,  and  which  are  the  most 
legitimate  titles  to  sovereignty,  raised  Goethe, 
six  months  after  his  arrival,  to  a  seat  in  the 
Privy  Council,  with  corresponding  title  and 
salary.  Goethe  was  twenty-seven,  Karl  Au- 
gust twenty. 

With  a  deep  groan  groaned  the  ofRcial 
world,  and  red  tape  turned  pale.  A  young,  un- 
known stranger,  and  a  plebeian,  without  drudg- 
ing through  the  subordinate  grades,  lifted  sud- 
denly over  the  heads  of  faithful  old  servants 
of  routine  !  All  Weimar  howled  !  So  brist- 
ling was  the  discontent  it  took  the  form  of 
a  written  protest  from  the  Duke's  ministers. 
The  boy-Duke  held  firm.  He  was  a  genuine 
Duke,  a  leader.  He  felt  that  by  his  side  he 
had  a  man  worth  more  than  scores  of  ordinary 
privy  councillors  and  ministers.  In  this  young 
stranger  he  had  got  possession  of  a  powerful 
genius,  that  is,  a  man  whose  brain  is  full  of 


268  GOETHE. 

light.  And  soon  —  as  is  the  way  with  a  power- 
ful genius,  when  furthered  and  not  obstructed 
—  Goethe  began  to  penetrate,  to  guide  all  de- 
partments. 

Among  his  superiorities  Goethe  had  the 
organizing  capacity,  and  to  make  things  bet- 
ter was  a  need  of  his  nature.  He  improved 
the  public-school  system  of  the  Duchy  ;  he 
put  new  life  into  the  University  of  Jena ;  he 
brought  order  into  the  finances,  and  made  the 
generous  Duke  a  wiser  economist.  He  re- 
opened the  neglected  mines  of  Ilmenau,  having 
taken  hold  of  Science,  —  for  which  he  had  a 
natural  aptitude,  —  in  order  that  he  might  do 
more  thorough  service  in  several  administra- 
tive departments  ;  he  established  a  fire-brigade  ; 
in  the  middle  of  the  night  he  would  leap  out 
of  bed  at  a  cry  of  fire,  and  hurry  to  a  neighbor- 
ing village,  coming  back  in  the  morning  with 
feet  blistered  and  hair  singed.  He  rode  from 
town  to  town  to  superintend  the  diafting  of 
men  for  the  war  contingent  ;  with  the  master 
of  the  forests  he  would  ride  through  the  public 
domain,  teaching  and  learning.  He  reformed 
and  directed  the  theatre,  and  created  the  beau- 
tiful park  at  Weimar.  When  the  President  of 
the  Chambers  died,  the  Duke  insisted  that  he 


GOETHE.  269 

should  fill  that  place  too.  He  was  the  soul  of 
the  government,  the  good  genius  of  the  com- 
munity, throwing  the  light  of  a  piercing  intel- 
ligence upon  all  public  interests,  seeing  to 
everything,  teaching  everybody,  helping  every- 
body, uplifting  everybody  :  the  most  efficient 
of  practical  workers,  openly  beneficent,  secretly 
charitable.  The  case  related  by  Lewes,  in  his 
admirable  Life  of  Goethe,  of  his  having  upheld 
and  supported  for  years,  by  sympathy  and 
money,  a  desolate  man  whom  he  had  never 
seen,  is  one  of  the  most  touching  and  beautiful 
exemplificatioils  ever  brought  to  light  of  the 
refined  and  generous  spirit  of  the  Christian 
gentleman.  During  this  early  period  Merk, 
the  cynic,  wrote  from  Weimar  :  "  Who  can 
withstand  the  disinterestedness  of  this  man  ?  " 
It  was  Goethe's  happiness  to  lend  a  helping 
hand  to  artists  and  othel"  men  of  worth.  He 
induced  the  Duke  to  call  Herder  to  Weimar  as 
court-chaplain.  His  influence  it  was  that  had 
Schiller  appointed  to  a  professorship  in  Jena, 
and  afterwards  obtained  a  pension  for  him, 
which  enabled  Schiller  to  domesticate  himself 
in  Weimar.  He  helped  to  get  some  of  Wie- 
land's  numerous  children  provided  for. 

In  the  midst  of  this  various  work,  as   the 


2/0  GOETHE. 

chief  steward  of  the  Duke  and  Duchy,  Goethe 
found  time,  nay,  he  gave  his  best  time,  his 
brightest  moments,  to  poetry,  working  at  Faust, 
or  WilJicIm  Meisicr,  or  IpJiigcnia,  according  to 
the  mood,  or  throwing  off  some  of  those  match- 
less lyrics  that  bloom  perennially  in  their  sim- 
plicity and  significance,  ever  as  fresh  and  fra- 
grant as  the  newest,  sweetest  flowers  of  a  June 
morning. 

When  one  takes  into  view  what  Goethe 
wrought  in  those  first  ten  years  of  his  young 
manhood,  how  he  shone  in  all  places  upon  all 
men,  how  he  grew  so  deeply  into  the  thoughts 
of  men  that  while  he  was  in  Italy  Weimar  suf- 
fered as  in  eclipse,  her  sunlight  withdrawn 
from  her,  we  can,  without  much  extravagance, 
figure  him  to  ourselves,  in  his  beaming  cre- 
ativeness  and  magnetic  beauty,  as  akin  to  the 
Apollo  of  Greek  imagination,  a  very  God  of 
poetry,  honored  too  as  the  healer,  and  the  har- 
monizer  of  discords. 

And  now,  at  the  end  of  ten  such  well- 
worked  years,  he  had  earned  a  holiday.  In 
the  beginning  of  the  autumn  of  1786,  his  pur- 
pose made  known  to  no  one  but  the  Duke,  he 
slipped  away,  and  under  an  assumed  name, — 
that  he   might   not   be  obstructed  by  his  re- 


GOETHE.  271 

nown,  —  crossing  the  Alps,  he  found  himself 
in  Italy.  His  feeling  towards  Italy  had  come 
to  be  a  yearning. 

In  one  of  those  original  sagacious  sentences 
that  abound  in  him  Goethe  says,  you  cannot 
enter  a  room  where  hangs  an  engraving  and 
go  out  the  same  as  you  came  in.  Active  in 
him  was  the  liability  to  be  transformed  by  im- 
pressions from  without ;  and  this  liability  is  a 
primary  qualification  of  the  poet,  for  it  comes 
from  the  warmth  and  readiness  of  the  man's 
feelings.  The  image  of  an  object  without, 
falling  upon  rich  emotional  capabilities  within, 
a  flame  is  enkindled  which,  purified  by  sensi- 
bility to  the  beautiful,  is  the  very  substance  of 
poetry.  During  the  eighteen  months  that 
Goethe  passed  in  Italy  his  susceptive,  hungry 
mind  was  in  a  glow.  Of  this  light  he  made 
the  most,  working  in  his  best  moments,  at 
Rome  and  Naples,  at  unfinished  manuscripts 
he  had  brought  with  him.  From  Italy  he 
came  back  refreshed,  strengthened,  calmed ; 
his  horizoig  enlarged,  his  appetite  for  knowl- 
edge allayed,  his  thoughts  on  Art  harmonized, 
compacted.  He  returned,  not  to  resume  his 
former  manifold  functions,  but  to  dedicate  him- 
self to  his  inborn  vocation,  poetry  and  litera- 


272  GOETHE. 

ture,  retaining  control  only  over  the  artistic 
and  scientific  institutions  of  Weimar.  Upon 
them  he  brought  to  bear  his  vast  acquired 
knowledge,  his  ripened  thoughtfulness,  and 
while  serving  them,  through  such  service 
deepening,  refining  his  own  culture. 

Goethe  was  an  incessant  worker,  an  unceas- 
ing learner.  Simply  by  supplying  the  needs 
of  his  own  nature,  his  life  was  the  putting  in 
practice  of  a  broad  counsel  of  Voltaire :  "  Give 
to  the  soul  all  possible  forms  :  it  is  a  fire  which 
God  has  confided  to  us  :  we  should  feed  it  with 
whatever  is  most  precious.  Our  being  should 
be  made  to  partake  of  all  imaginable  condi- 
tions :  the  doors  of  the  mind  should  be  opened 
to  all  knowledge,  all  feeling.  Provided  they 
don't  enter  pell-mell,  there  is  room  for  all." 
And  this  counsel  Goethe  could  follow,  because, 
having  an  omnivorous  appetite  for  whatever 
can  be  known  and  whatever  can  be  felt,  he  had 
within  his  intellect  that  high  logical  method  — 
an  indispensable  requirement  for  all  large  per- 
formance—  which  could  so  class  and  coordi- 
nate  his  vast  stores  as  to  have  them  all  readily 
available,  and  make  room  for  an  endless  sup- 
ply. No  man  ever  held  closer,  wiser  watch 
over  his  knowledge  and  his  feelings,  in  order 


GOETHE.  273 

to  keep  his  stores  sweet  and  incorruptible.  In 
all  efforts,  practical  and  theoretical,  for  found- 
ing or  bettering  institutions,  for  combating  or 
diffusing  ideas,  he  strove  to  obey — and  for 
obeying  had  clearer  insights,  deeper  intui- 
tions, than  most  men  —  the  mandate  conveyed 
in  the  simple  words  of  Jesus  :  "  Every  plant 
which  my  Heavenly  Father  has  not  planted 
shall  be  rooted  up."  Seeking  always,  unremit- 
tingly, through  four  score  yea*rs,  his  personal 
improvement,  —  improvement  moral,  aesthet- 
ical,  intellectual,  —  intently  did  he  aim  to  make 
these  profound  words  the  touchstone  of  his 
own  inward  motions. 

After  middle  life  Goethe  wrote :  "  I,  who 
have  known  and  suffered  from  the  perpetual 
agitation  of  feelings  and  opinions  in  myself 
and  in  others,  delight  in  the  sublime  repose 
which  is  produced  by  contact  with  the  great 
and  eloquent  silence  of  nature."  The  man 
who  "  suffers  from  the  perpetual  agitation  of 
feelings  in  himself  and  others "  is  endowed 
with  richest  material  for  poetry :  he  suffers 
because  he  feels  so  keenly.  Sympathy  is  the 
poet's  capital ;  and  when  to  this  wealth  of 
sensibility  he  adds  the  decisive  poetic  gift, 
sense  of  the  beautiful,  the  refining  transfigur- 
18 


274  GOETHE. 

ing-  power,  he  is  a  poet  in  posse,  for  he  pos- 
sesses "the  vision  and  the  faculty  divine." 
To  be  a  poet  in  esse,  he  must  have  in  fur- 
ther addition  the  "  accomplishment  of  verse." 
Wordsworth  says  : 

"  Oh,  many  are  the  poets  that  are  sown 
By  nature ;  men  endowed  with  highest  gifts, 
The  vision  and  the  faculty  divine, 
Yet  wanting  the  accomplishment  of  verse." 

So,  too,  with  poetic  painters :  some,  with 
fine  gifts,  cannot  acquire  manipulating  dexter- 
ity. This  seems  to  have  been  the  case  with 
Hazlitt,  and  somewhat  with  Haydon,  who 
thence  failed  as  Artists  ;  for  it  is  the  power 
adequately  to  embody  poetic  conceptions  and 
feelings  that  makes  the  Artist.  When  Cole- 
ridge says  of  Shakespeare  that  his  judgment 
is  equal  to  his  genius,  he  proclaims  him  a 
great  Artist.  Shakespeare's  intellectual  re- 
sources for  turning  to  best  account  his  deep 
glowing  sensibilities  were  of  the  highest.  To 
his  great  conceptions  he  knew  how  to  give 
dramatic  form  with  a  nicety  of  adaptation, 
with  an  accuracy  of  adjustment,  which  show 
them  to  the  best  advantage.  He  has  the  art 
to  incarnate  his  ideas  and  feelings  in  firm, 
brilliant,  transparent  forms,  and  he  has  a  sure 
eye  for  proportion. 


GOETHE.  275 

Never  did  man  more  fully  than  Goethe 
-earn  the  high  title  of  Artist.  I  call  it  a  high 
title,  because  genuine  Art,  really  Fine  Art,  im- 
plies the  power  of  giving  expression  to  poetic 
thought  and  sentiment,  and,  in  its  highest 
range,  to  broadest  and  deepest  poetic  thought 
and  sentiment.  There  can  be  no  Fine  Art 
without  "  the  vision  and  the  faculty  divine," 
Facility  in  clothing  thought  with  words,  rare 
definiteness  of  perception,  delight  in  the  con- 
crete, —  the  combination  of  aptitudes  that  em- 
power the  poetic  mind  to  give  clean,  clear  ex- 
pression to  its  workings,  and  with  these  the 
instinct  and  judgment  to  choose  the  most  fit- 
ting form,  —  in  all  this  Goethe  is  unsurpassed. 
Thence  in  his  performance  there  is  the  grace 
and  buoyancy  which  are  the  charm  of  the  best 
Art. 

From  his  brief  epigrams  and  distichs  to 
songs  and  ballads,  and  thence  to  his  longer 
poems,  Iphigenia,  and  Tasso,  and  Herman,  and 
Dorothea,  and  Faust,  in  all  there  is,  I  had  al- 
most said,  artistic  perfection,  resulting  from 
the  harmonious  marriage  between  sentiment 
and  diction,  between  thought  and  word,  be- 
tween substance  and  form.  His  best  work  — 
and  much   of  it  is   best  —  is   truly  classical ; 


2/6  GOETHE. 

that  is,  it  embodies  healthy  sentiment,  just 
thought,  in  choice  language  the  most  fitting 
to  express  them.  A  high  characteristic  of 
Goethe  is  his  simplicity  of  diction,  —  a  quality 
by  no  means  common  to  all  good  poets,  — • 
which  in  him  comes  from  the  clearness  of  his 
mind  and  his  sincerity.  All  Goethe's  works 
are  the  offspring  of  his  interior  self.  His  pen 
took  no  bribes  from  vanity  or  ambition,  or 
from  poverty.  Especially  were  his  works  the 
offspring  of  his  love.  What  he  wrote  he 
wrote  from  sympathy  with  his  subject,  —  the 
only  pure  source  of  literary  work  ;  and  how 
wide  were  his  sympathies  may  be  learned 
from  the  unprecedented  range  of  his  subjects. 
More  trustfully  and  deeply  than  any  one  else, 
Nature  let  him  into  her  confidence,  so  vari- 
ous and  delicate  and  so  piercing  were  his  per- 
ceptions. And,  with  all  his  rich  command  of 
individualities,  he  was  a  far-reaching  general- 
izer,  a  sure  thinker  ;  and  thus  his  multifarious 
work,  both  as  Artist  and  Naturalist,  has  a 
clean  fidelity  as  well  as  rare  vividness. 

Goethe  lived  in  constant  intimacy  with  Nat- 
ure ;  he  delighted  to  consort  with  her  in  all 
her  moods.  A  year  or  two  after  his  arrival  in 
Weimar,  while  rebuilding  his  "  garden-house," 


GOETHE.  277 

he  slept  out-of-doors  wrapt  in  his  cloak.  On 
the  19th  of  May,  1777,  he  writes  to  Frau  von 
Stein :  "  Last  night  I  slept  on  the  terrace 
under  my  blue  cloak,  awoke  three  times,  at 
twelve,  two,  and  four,  and  at  each  time  there 
was  a  new  glory  around  me  in  the  sky."  Here 
is  another  passage  which  shows  the  spirit  in 
which  he  worked.  It  occurs  in  a  note  to  Her- 
der in  1784:  "I  hasten  to  tell  you  of  the  for- 
tune that  has  befallen  me  ;  I  have  found  nei- 
ther gold  nor  silver,  but  that  which  gives  rae 
inexpressible  joy,  the  os  i?itcri)iaxilla)'e  (inter- 
maxillary bone)  in  man  !  I  compared  the  skulls 
of  men  and  beasts  in  company  with  Loder, 
came  on  the  trace  of  it,  and  lo !  there  it  is," 

Sympathy  with  Nature,  delight  in  her  as- 
pects, her  phenomena,  her  procedure,  is  the 
most  solid  foundation  for  competence  in  Art. 
Nature  ever  dominates  Art ;  as  Shakes^Deare 
says, 

"  Nature  is  made  better  by  no  mean. 
But  Nature  makes  that  mean ;  so,  o'er  that  art 
Which,  you  say,  adds  to  nature,  is  an  art 
That  nature  makes." 

A  chief  source  of  Goethe's  preeminence  is 
the  union  in  him,  each  in  such  high  degree,  of 
the  poetic  and  the  scientific,  the  two  cardinal 


278  GOETHE. 

tendencies  of  human  faculty.  All  men  have 
some  capacity  for  classification  and  for  appre- 
hension of  law,  which  is  the  initiatory  move- 
ment toward  science  ;  and  science  is  simply 
knowledge  methodized  ;  and  all  men  have  some 
feeling  for  the  beautiful,  which  is  the  primary 
element  of  poetry.  But  to  have  both  these 
tendencies  combined,  each  with  liveliest  im- 
pulsion, and  opportunities  for  their  play,  to- 
gether with  length  of  years,  has  been  given 
only  to  ■  the  preeminent  German  poet-sage. 
Shelley  is  the  only  other  great  poet  who,  to 
the  love  of  nature  native  to  all  poets,  added 
a  love  for  investigating  her  phenomena  ;  but 
Shelley  died  before  even  the  summer  of  life 
had  sunned  his  faculties  into  ripe  productive- 
ness. Coleridge  was  metaphysical  rather  than 
scientific,  and  Wordsworth's  intense  love  of 
nature  was  sentimental,  not  intellectual.  In 
the  age  of  Shakespeare  and  Milton  Science 
had  not  unfolded  itself  into  organic  form. 

Goethe  was  a  great,  I  had  almost  said  a 
sublime,  naturalist,  so  high  were  his  gifts  for 
enjoying,  for  apprehending,  for  interpreting 
nature.  He  was  at  once  a  poetic  and  an  in- 
tellectual lover  of  nature,  —  nature,  that  vast 
mysterious  presence,  in  which  and  by  which 


GOETHE.  279 

we  live,  whose  outward  aspect  is  for  us  an 
hourly  wonder,  an  unfading  charm,  and  whose 
inward  movement  is  a  deeper  wonder,  reveal- 
ing forever  fresh  power  and  beauty  to  man,  — 
man,  a  spiritual,  intellectual,  conscious  creat- 
ure, and  yet  a  child  of  Nature,  his  being  so 
closely  interwoven  with  hers  that  he  is  partly 
her  vassal,  partly  her  lord.  Of  this  mighty, 
mysterious,  myriad-organed  power  Goethe  was 
a  favorite,  but  not  a  spoilt,  child  (there  are  no 
spoilt  children  of  Nature,  only  of  fortune),  a 
favorite  from  his  docility  to  her  teachings,  his 
disinterested  love  of  her,  his  delight  in  her 
profusion,  his  openness  to  her  manifold  attrac- 
tion, his  cheerful  recognition  of  her  multiplex, 
kindly,  inexorable  law.  Through  his  love  and 
obedience,  from  vassal  he  came  to  hold  much 
of  the  privilege  of  lord. 

Goethe  was  too  genuine  a  naturalist  to  be 
fond  of  metaphysics  or  of  ecclesiastical  theol- 
ogy. As  a  master-mind  he  apprehended  them, 
and  discerned  their  unavoidable  subjectivity, 
and  thence  their  one-sidedness  and  insuffi- 
ciency. He  was  not,  as  Coleridge  says  of  him- 
self, "  early  bewildered  in  metaphysics  and  in 
theological  controversy."  In  after  years  Cole- 
ridge deplored  the  having  in  his  youth  given 


280  GOETHE. 

SO  much  time  to  what  in  his  Biographia  Liter- 
aria  he  calls  "this  preposterous  pursuit,"  from 
which  he  had  been,  he  says,  happily  with- 
drawn by  awakened  interest  in  poetry ;  and 
he  reiterates  his  condemnation  in  the  follow- 
ing emphatic  passage :  "  Well  would  it  have 
been  for  me,  perhaps,  had  I  never  relapsed 
into  the  same  mental  disease;  if  I  had  con- 
tinued to  pluck  the  flowers  and  reap  the  har- 
vest from  the  cultivated  surface,  instead  of 
delving  in  the  unwholesome  quicksilver  mines 
of  metaphysic  lore.  And  if  in  after  time  I  have 
sought  a  refuge  from  bodily  pain  and  misman- 
aged sensibility  in  abstruse  researches,  which 
exercise  the  strength  and  subtlety  of  the  un- 
derstanding without  awakening  the  feelings  of 
the  heart,  still  there  was  a  long  and  blessed 
interval,  during  which  my  natural  faculties 
were  allowed  to  expand,  and  my  original  ten- 
dencies to  develop  themselves, — my  fancy, 
and  the  love  of  nature,  and  the  sense  of 
beauty  in  forms  and  sounds." 

As  in  Coleridge  it  was  the  poet  who  de- 
tected the  defect  of  abstract  research,  when 
uncheered  and  unguidcd  by  the  maternal 
voices  of  nature,  in  Goethe  it  was  both  the 
poet  and  the  naturalist  ;  for  the  sound   natu- 


GOETHE.  281 

ralist  refuses  to  build  with  imaginings  or  as- 
sumptions, which  are  the  chief  resource  of  the 
theologian  and  the  metaphysician.  At  the 
same  time  Goethe,  being  a  large  thinker,  a 
man  of  ideas,  with  an  originating  mind,  a 
mind  in  such  close  contact  with  nature  that, 
as  was  said  of  Kepler,  he  "  could  think  the 
thoughts  of  God,"  he  would  have  curtailed 
his  high  privilege,  maimed  his  mental  action, 
had  he  refused  to  let  his  thought  have  its  full 
sweep  in  surmising,  in  conceiving,  in  imagin- 
ing the  procedure  of  nature.  The  capacity 
to  discover  a  law  of  nature  involves  a  power 
of  somewhat  preconceiving  it.  Without  this 
power  —  a  very  high,  uncommon  one  —  of 
originating  ideas  within  the  mind,  the  mind 
could  not  put  itself  upon  the  track  to  discover 
a  law  of  nature.  With  profound  insight  Kant 
lays  down  the  position  :  "  What  truth  soever 
is  necessary  and  of  universal  extent  is  derived 
to  the  mind  by  its  own  operation,  and  does 
not  rest  on  observation  and  experience."  The 
inductive  method  supposes,  of  course,  a  capac- 
ity in  the  mind  to  class  and  coordinate  facts, 
and  the  power  to  coordinate  facts  involves 
necessarily  the  power  to  preconceive,  before 
making  the  induction,  the  law  that  rules  them. 


282  GOETHE. 

To  congenial,  piercing  minds  nature  gives 
hints,  and  such  minds  delight  in  taking  such 
hints,  in  seizing  at  a  glance,  by  a  flashing  im- 
aginative process,  a  law,  or  the  elements  of  a 
law.  These  rich  guesses,  these  prolific  imag- 
inations, before  they  can  be  used  as  safe  build- 
ing material,  are  to  be  subjected  to  strictest 
tests.  This  union  of  theorizing  creative  med- 
itation with  scrupulous  and  efficient  verifica- 
tion by  induction  of  facts,  this  it  is  that  con- 
stitutes Goethe's  claim  to  the  title  of  great 
naturalist.  Reason,  which  is  the  arbiter  in  all 
investigations  conducted  by  man,  in  whatever 
sphere,  —  reason  is  an  interior,  invisible  might. 
They  who  seek  the  reason  of  all  tilings  from 
tvithoiit  preclude  reason,  is  the  import  of  the 
motto  to  one  of  Coleridge's  philosophical  es- 
says in  The  Friend.  Never  was  a  man  more 
susceptible  than  Goethe  to  impressions  from 
without,  more  eager  for  facts ;  and,  at  the 
same  time,  never  one  carried  within  himself  a 
stronger,  clearer  light  to  sift  and  class  facts 
and  to  detect  their  governing  law.  The  natu- 
ralist, to  be  great,  must  have,  like  Goethe,  a 
philosophic  mind,  that  is,  a  mind  which  loves 
to  search  for,  and  can  reach,  first  principles. 
But  to  this  part  of  Goethe's  greatness  must 


GOETHE.  283 

not  be  given  too  much  of  our  limited  time. 
His  best  moods  he  gave  to  poetry.  Fresh 
poetry  can  only  be  written  in  the  best  moods 
that  a  man  is  capable  of.  When  Goethe  could 
write  poetry,  he  wrote  that  and  nothing  else. 
When  inspiration  folds  the  faculties  in  its 
glowing  embrace,  they  become  insensible  to 
all  save  its  breathings.  That  Goethe  devoted 
so  much  thought  to  science  proves  the  rich 
fullness  of  his  mental  endowmient,  and  that 
when  he  could  not  write  poetry  he  had  the 
spring  and  strength  and  means  for  centring 
his  attention  on  the  next  highest  work,  —  into 
which,  too,  he  brought  some  of  his  creative 
power.  He  had  easy  command  over  the  dif- 
fering mental  instrumentalities  which  science 
and  poetry  work  with.  When  producing  po- 
etry he  was  obeying  subjectively  and  irresisti- 
bly the  most  emphatic  will  of  God  as  to  him- 
self; when  intent  on  discovering  the  laws  of 
nature,  he  was  finding  out  objectively  what  is 
the  will  of  God. 

The  creative  gift  constitutes  the  poet :  to 
make,  to  create,  is  the  meaning  of  the  Greek 
word  from  which  the  term  poet  is  derived.  By 
virtue  it  is  of  his  livelier  sympathy  with  being 
that  the  poet  is  empowered  to,  humanly,  ere- 


284  GOETHE. 

ate,  to  reproduce,  being.  He  has  a  keener 
apprehension  of,  a  warmer  feehng  for,  life. 
Through  the  intensity  of  this  feeling  he  can 
imaginatively  re-live  another's  life,  and  thus 
represent  it  from  within,  —  re-live  another 
life,  as  he  re-lives  his  own  daily  life  through 
inward  motion.  Only  what  is  thus  brought 
forth,  by  help  of  light  from  the  beautiful,  is 
poetry,  is  creation.  Fresh  poetry  must  come 
from  the  inmost  self,  and  that  self  must  be 
so  deep  and  true  as  to  hold  more  humanity 
than  one  man's  share,  and  is  thus  able,  is  im- 
pelled, to  throw  off  fragments  of  humanity 
that  shall  be  as  veritable  as  those  we  meet  on 
the  market-place.  From  this  teeming  fullness 
comes  the  inward  urgency,  the  spontaneous 
flood. 

Like  all  the  most  abundant  and  vital  and 
honest  minds,  Goethe  was  eminently  spontane- 
ous. He  wrote,  not  only  from  within  out- 
wardly, but  from  an  inward  pressure.  He  did 
not  take  up  promising  subjects  from  without 
and  adorn  them  ;  but  a  feeling  shaped  itself 
within  him,  thus  weaving  for  itself  a  fresh 
body,  —  the  true  creative  process,  whereby  the 
generative  spirit  makes  the  material  in  which 
to  embody  itself.     At  other  times  he  adopted 


GOETHE.  285 

a  form  already  known,  and  reanimated  it,  re- 
baptized  it  ;  thus,  by  means  of  his  inward  fire, 
putting  a  new  soul  into  an  old  story,  and  by  re- 
generative power  giving  fascination  to  an  un- 
promising subject,  causing  it  to  sparkle  with 
fresh  movement,  through  the  quickening  life 
of  genius,  working  with  clean,  warm  human 
sympathies.  Much  verse  is  written  in  the 
opposite  way.  Acceptable,  attractive  subjects 
are  deftly,  gracefully  treated  with  more  or  less 
poetic  spirit.  Old  popular  themes  are  taken 
in  hand,  to  be  reembodied,  a  new  face  is  given 
to  them,  —  but  no  new  soul  is  breathed  into 
them.  Even  the  great  friend  of  Goethe,  Schil- 
ler, worked  much  in  this  fashion.  He  was 
ever  casting  about  for  subjects.  In  one  of 
his  letters  to  Goethe  he  complains  of  a  dearth 
of  them.  Goethe  never  felt  this  dearth  :  in 
him  subjects  bubbled  up  abundantly  from  the 
spring  within.  He  could  afford  to  give  up 
subjects  to  his  friend,  as  he  did  William  Tell. 

To  this  exuberance  of  feeling,  this  readiness 
of  sympathy,  Goethe  added  largeness  and  fine- 
ness of  intellectual  faculty,  which,  assiduously 
cultivated,  gave  him  command  of  strong,  flex- 
ible, intellectual  implements,  so  that  he  pos- 
sessed  a   rarely  complete   equipment  for  the 


286  GOETHE. 

high  function  of  poet  and  artist,  and  could 
bring  within  the  range  of  his  Art  an  unusually 
full  circle  of  human  interests. 

Goethe  was  one  of  the  wisest  of  men.  This 
implies  a  rich  humanity  of  nature.  To  be  very 
wise  a  man  must  enjoy  that  penetrating,  easy 
vision  into  the  most  subtle,  as  well  as  the  most 
necessary,  human  relations,  which  is  only  en- 
joyed when  keenest  intellectual  arrows  are 
tempered  in  a  flood  of  disinterested  feeling. 
Goethe's  wisdom  makes  the  jDermanent  attrac- 
tion of  his  writings,  verse  as  well  as  prose  ; 
for  the  best  poetry,  to  be  the  best,  must  issue 
from  the  warm  depths  where  tenderness  is  by 
intellect  ingeniously  wrought  into  adamantine 
chains  of  meaning. 

Along  the  lines  of  Goethe's  pen  wisdom 
sparkled  like  verdure  along  the  path  of  a 
spring-swollen  brook.  To  his  larger  works  it 
gives  their  weighty  import  and  their  inward- 
ness of  beauty,  interlacing  their  fibre  with 
golden  threads  of  significancy.  On  distich 
and  quatrain  and  other  short  poems  wisdom 
glistens  like  solitary  diamond  on  a  white,  sup- 
ple finger.     Take  this  as  a  sample  : 

"  Do  thou  what 's  right  in  thy  affairs  : 
The  rest's  done  for  thee  unawares." 


GOETHE.  287 

Or  this  : 


"  Nothing  could  make  me  deeper  moan, 
Than  being  in  Paradise  alone." 


Or  this 


'  To  sweetly  remember  and  finely  to  think, 
Is  tasting  of  life  at  its  deep  inmost  brink." 


Or  this 


"  When  in  thy  head  and  heart  it  stirs, 
How  bettered  could  thy  doom  be  ? 
Who  no  more  loves  and  no  more  errs 
Had  better  in  his  tomb  be." 

Or  this  : 

"  For  what  is  greatest  no  one  strives, 
But  each  one  envies  others'  lives  : 
The  worst  of  enviers  is  the  elf 
Who  thinks  that  all  are  like  himself." 

Many  pages  might  be  filled  with  similar  brill- 
iants. 

Goethe  said  of  Heine  that  he  wants  love. 
From  its  abundance  in  himself  he  knew  the 
value  and  high  import  of  this  element  in  liter- 
ary production.  To  his  own  pages  this  su- 
preme attribute  of  mankind  gives  mellowness, 
imparts  to  his  plots  and  characters  a  higher 
specific  gravity.  This  controlling  humanity 
of  feeling  turns  the  Pagan  Princess  Iphigeiiia 
into  a  Christian  heroine ;  gives  arterial  color 


288  GOETHE. 

and  rounded  fullness  to  all  the  personages  of 
that  beautiful  idyllic  epic,  Hermann  and  Doro^ 
t/iea,  —  ideal  personages  who,  thiough  the  po- 
etic potency  of  their  maker,  seem  more  real 
than  their  living  counterparts  in  a  small  Ger- 
man town  ;  makes  of  The  God  and  the  Baya- 
dere the  most  significant,  the  most  profound, 
and  the  most  exquisite  of  ballads  ;  pervades 
the  wise  pages  of  WilJielvi  Meister,  and  is  the 
very  soul  of  the  mastership  that  presided  over 
the  birth  and  growth  of  that  marvelous  crea- 
tion Mignon.  This  perfusive  fellow-feeling 
steeps  all  Goethe's  writings  in  its  life-strength- 
ening current.  And  this  man  has  been  called 
cold !  So  has  been  that  controlled  volcano, 
Washington.  Goethe  once  said  :  "  The  most 
important  thing  is  to  learn  to  rule  one's  self. 
If  I  gave  way  to  my  impulses,  I  have  such  as 
might  ruin  me  and  all  about  me." 

The  love  of  man  was  in  Goethe  accompanied, 
I  may  say  surmounted,  by  what  may  be  termed 
the  uplifting,  the  transfiguring  element  in  the 
poetic  organization,  —  vivid  consciousness  of 
a  transearthly  spiritual  world,  enfolding  our 
earthworld,  —  living  belief  in  a  hereafter,  where 
the  spirit,  man,  divested  of  his  clay-clothes, 
shall  continue  to  live  and  to  advance.     This 


GOETHE.  289 

soaring  element  is  as  active  in  Dante  as  in 
Homer,  working  the  evolution  of  one  of  the 
richest  products  of  human  genius,  the  Di- 
vina  Commedia.  This  belief  inspired  Milton 
with  our  great  English  Epic,  is  an  awful  pres- 
ence in  Hamlet,  and  the  animating  principle 
of  Wordsworth's  immortal  ode.  It  hallows 
the  conclusion  of  both  parts  of  Faust.  At  the 
end  of  the  last  sublime  scene  of  the  First  Part, 
when  Margaret,  about  to  be  executed,  ex- 
claims : 

"  Thine  am  I,  Father  !  save  me  ! 
Ye  Angels,  ye  holy  ones,  guard  me, 
Camp  ye  around  here  to  ward  me. 
Henry,  I  shudder  for  thee  ! " 

and  Mephistopheles,  like  the  consummate 
worldling  that  he  is,  pronounces : 

"  She  is  judged  !  " 

comes  a  voice  from  above  : 

"  She  is  saved  ! " 

The  moral  grandeur  of  this  utterance  is  con- 
current with  its  aesthetic  beauty.  The  terrible 
gloom  needed  a  flash  of  redeeming  light ;  the 
agonizing  sympathy  with  Margaret  longed  for 
a  solace.  To  draw  this  voice  from  Heaven 
Goethe's  tenderness  of  nature  was  backed  by 
his  faith. 

19 


290  GOETHE. 

Towards  the  end  of  the  Second  Part,  at 
the  moment  of  the  death  of  Faust,  his  soul 
is  snatched  away  from  Mephistopheles  by  An- 
gels, one  of  them  singing: 

"  Who  bestirs  him,  striving  ever, 
Him  can  we  surely  deliver." 

As  they  bear  Faust  upward,  he  is  met  by  Mar- 
garet attended  by  bands  of  Angels,  singing  : 

"  Almighty  Love  upbuildeth  all, 
And  saves  them  even  when  they  fall." 

Goethe  sends  Margaret  and  Faust  to  Heav- 
en, because  he  believed  in  it  for  himself.  Be- 
ing a  good  as  well  as  a  great  man,  and  having 
absolute  faith  in  the  "Almighty  Love,"  his 
was  not  at  all  a  religion  of  fear.  "  At  the  age 
of  seventy-five  "  he  once  said  to  his  secretary, 
Eckerman,  "  one  must,  of  course,  think  fre- 
quently of  death.  But  this  thought  never 
gives  me  the  least  uneasiness,  I  am  so  fully 
convinced  that  the  soul  is  indestructible,  and 
that  its  activity  will  continue  through  eternity. 
It  is  like  the  sun,  which  seems  to  our  earthly 
eyes  to  set  in  night,  but  is  in  reality  gone  to 
diffuse  its  light  elsewhere."  And  again,  on 
another  occasion :  "  I  could  in  nowise  dis- 
pense with  the  happiness  of  believing  in  our 


GOETHE.  291 

future  existence,  and,  indeed,  could  say,  with 
Lorenzo  dei  Medici,  that  those  are  dead  for 
this  life  even  who  have  no  hope  for  another." 

Goethe's  belief  was  not  notional,  it  did  not 
come  from  the  mere  understanding  partially- 
illuminated  by  the  finer  emotions,  as  does  so 
much  of  what  is  called  religious  belief ;  a  kind 
of  belief  which  is  not  truly  religious  is,  indeed, 
only  formal  and  dogmatic,  and  is  apt  to  be 
accompanied  by  intolerance,  and  especially  by 
Pharisaism.  Goethe  agreed  with  the  devout 
Joubert,  who  says :  "  We  know  God  easily, 
provided  we  do  not  constrain  ourselves  to  de- 
fine him."  The  God  of  sectarians  is  a  subjec- 
tive God,  made  after  the  image  of  the  secta- 
rian, in  whose  organization  are  predominant, 
not  the  nobler  disinterested  emotions,  but  the 
understanding  and  the  self-seeking  impulses. 
The  religious  faith  of  an  emotional  man  with 
large  reasoning  range,  like  Goethe,  is  objec- 
tive. Goethe  believed  in  the  immanence  (to 
use  a  technical  term)  of  the  creative  spirit  in 
all  nature  ;  but  he,  at  the  same  time,  believed 
in  a  transcending  Mind,  that  sustains  and 
rules  the  whole.  Sensuous  as  was  his  nature, 
it  was  so  large  and  fully  furnished  that,  while 
never  seeking  to  know  intellectually  the  un- 


292  GOETHE. 

knowable,  and  especially  not  drawing  impera- 
tive dogmas  out  of  assumptions  and  imagina- 
tions, he  had  within,  in  his  higher  conscious- 
ness, a  deep,  strong  feeling  for  the  invisible 
spiritual,  the  far  and  yet  near  supernal,  the 
vast,  celestial,  inscrutable  Might.  And  thus 
in  Faust,  in  the  great  ballads  of  the  Bayadere 
and  the  Unfaithfttl  Boy,  he  delights  to  round 
off  with  a  limitless  atmosphere,  sending  the 
reader's  imagination  into  the  Infinite. 

For  Goethe  as  for  Joubert  it  was  not  diffi- 
cult to  "know  God,"  because  their  aim,  and 
at  times  their  struggle,  to  live  obediently  to 
his  will  brought  them  nearer  to  him,  and  their 
glowing  gifts  clarified  their  vision  for  the  di- 
vine perfections. 

There  is  but  one  way  to  know  God,  and  that 
is  to  live  his  law.  This  Goethe  was  ever  striv- 
ing to  do,  ever  aiming  to  better  himself  mor- 
ally, spiritually,  intellectually.  Living  under 
the  momentum  of  a  never-remitted  aspiration, 
he  lived  the  highest  life  that  the  individual 
can  live.  And  Goethe,  a  man  of  genius  and 
superior  mental  powers,  having  lived  this  high 
life  more  busily,  for  a  longer  stretch  of  years 
than  almost  any  other  man,  his  writings,  in 
which  the  best  and  brightest  of  him  is  skill- 


GOETHE.  293 

fully  embodied  with  purest  art,  are,  to  any 
competent  reader,  a  most  profitable  and  en- 
riching study.  Filling-  more  than  fifty  vol- 
umes, in  their  manifoldness  and  their  extent 
they  almost  form  a  literature  of  themselves. 
And  to  these  are  to  be  added  thousands  of  let- 
ters, happily  preserved,  and  given  to  the  world 
in  six  volumes  of  correspondence,  during  ten 
years,  between  him  and  Schiller ;  six  volumes 
of  that  with  Zelter,  during  thirty  years  ;  three 
volumes,  running  through  half  a  century,  of 
notes  and  letters  to  the  Frau  von  Stein  ;  two 
volumes  between  him  and  his  noble  friend  and 
Sovereign  Karl  August,  for  fifty-two  years  ; 
two  with  Knebel,  covering  the  long  space  of 
fifty-seven  years ;  besides  a  series  of  single 
volumes  to  Lavater,  to  Jacobi,  to  Merk,  to  the 
Countess  Stolberg,  to  Voight  and  others ;  and 
three,  lately  published,  of  letters  written  be- 
tween his  fifteenth  and  twenty-sixth  years  to 
his  youthful  friends  and  companions,  —  the 
whole  forming  a  collection  of  the  most  valua- 
ble letters  from  one  man  ever  published  or 
penned,  the  most  intellectual,  fluent,  lively, 
wise,  honest,  —  a  vast  varied  correspondence, 
disclosing  the  affectionateness  and  dutifulness 
of  his  nature,  the  breadth  and  depth  of  his 
knowled2:e  and  culture. 


294  GOETHE. 

Thus  lived  this  illustrious  man  his  long  life, 
ever  seeking  truth  ;  by  love  of  it  moved  to 
send  forth  his  rare  capacities  on  many  paths  in 
the  search.  A  gentle  nature,  though  so  ener- 
getic :  no  bitterness  in  his  being.  Hardly  was 
he  capable  of  hatred :  this  was  almost  a  de- 
fect in  him.  And  his  other  defects.-'  Have 
you  nothing  to  say  of  his  faults }  Nothing. 
A  man's  faults — save  in  people  of  one-sided 
selfishness  —  are  mostly  perversions  of  useful 
qualities,  perversions  which,  under  healthiest 
conditions,  could  not  be.  Especially  is  this 
the  case  with  one  of  so  compact  and  complete 
a  mental  organism  as  Goethe.  Such  a  man's 
faults  are  temporary  misdirections  of  sound 
impulses  and  appetites.  In  a  full,  rounded, 
active  nature,  defects  are  interwoven  with  ex- 
cellences, —  are  not  to  be  divided  from  these 
without  laceration ;  they  make  part  of  the 
motion  and  exceptional  glow  of  the  individual 
being. 

From  those  perversions  which  sometimes 
disfigure  the  characters  even  of  good  and 
great  men,  Goethe  was  singularly  free.  He 
was  not  vain,  he  was  not  proud,  he  was  not 
envious  ;  he  was  aspiring,  but  not  ambitious, 
nor  avaricious,  nor  covetous  of  others'  goods  ; 


GOETHE.  295 

nor  was  he  narrow  or  prejudiced.  He  was  a 
just  man  and  a  generous  ;  charitable  he  was 
and  genuinely  religious,  dutiful,  forbearing, 
more  exacting  towards  himself  than  towards 
others.  Within  his  best  being  Goethe  carried 
an  ideal,  to  which  he  strove  to  conform  his 
daily  doings,  —  an  ideal  so  clean  and  high  that 
those  who  have  taken  on  themselves  to  sit  in 
adverse  judgment  on  him  could  not  conceive 
of,  could  hardly  understand. 

That  the  possessor  of  such  varied,  brilliant, 
and  solid  gifts  strove  ever,  in  the  exercise  of 
them,  to  approach  a  lofty  standard,  which  only 
a  poet  who  was  a  good  man  could  erect  and 
keep  before  him,  to  this  it  is  owing  that  to 
ponder  and  endeavor  studiously  to  fathom  his 
life  and  life-work  is  an  enjoyment,  a  disci- 
pline, a  progress.  He  charms  and  instructs 
us,  as  he  charmed  and  instructed  his  contem- 
porary acquaintance.  In  his  opening  career 
at  Weimar  he  so  captivated  all  by  his  sympa- 
thizing ways,  his  playfulness,  his  genius,  that 
Knebel  wrote  of  him  :  "  He  rose  like  a  star  ; 
every  body  worshiped  him."  And  that  star 
has  had,  will  have,  no  setting.  Niebuhr,  the 
historian,  well  versed  in  the  characteristics  of 
great  men,  said  of  him  :  "  He  towers  above  all 


296  GOETHE. 

whom  Germany  has  produced."  Burger,  the 
poet,  called  him  "  The  astonishing  magician." 
The  greatest  and  the  least  who  came  into  close 
contact  with  him  loved,  admired,  trusted  him. 
The  brothers  Humboldt,  and  other  statesmen 
and  philosophers  and  highest  teachers,  all  ac- 
knowledged their  obligations  to  him.  Some 
of  them  sought  his  company  to  refresh  and 
strengthen  their  minds.  The  noble,  enlight- 
ened ducal  family  of  Weimar,  through  three 
generations,  have  continued  the  worship  of  ad- 
miring love  towards  the  friend  and  benefactor 
of  their  house.  Wieland  and  Herder,  his  il- 
lustrious contemporaries  and  neighbors,  were 
comforted  by  his  friendship,  elevated  by  his 
genius.  Schiller  said  of  him :  "  If  he  were  not 
as  a  man  more  admirable  than  any  I  have 
ever  known,  I  should  only  marvel  at  his  genius 
from  the  distance.  But  I  can  truly  say  that 
in  the  six  years  I  have  lived  with  him,  I  have 
never  for  one  moment  been  deceived  in  his 
character.  He  has  a  high  truth  and  integrity, 
and  is  thoroughly  in  earnest  for  the  Right  and 
the  Good." 

Earnestly,  indefatigably,  faithfully,  resplen- 
dently,  did  John  Wolfgang  Goethe  work 
through  fourscore  years,  cultivating  his  com- 


GOETHE.  297 

prehensive,  many-sided,  musical  mind ;  his  soul 
so  high-strung,  that  to  him  the  singing  of  the 
spheres,  the  divine  rliythm  of  creation,  was 
more  audible  than  to  most  men  ;  and  so  su- 
perbly gifted  that  he  could  echo  it  in  the 
choicest  tones  of  wisdom  and  poetry.  Bori* 
in  Frankfort-on-the-Main  the  28th  of  August, 
1749,  he  breathed  his  last  in  Weimar  on  the 
22d  of  March,  1832,  tranquilly,  without  pain, 
seated  in  an  arm-chair  beside  his  bed.  In  full 
possession  of  his  great  faculties,  he  went  up 
to  higher  spheres,  where  Dante  and  Shake- 
speare awaited  him.  The  last  words  from  his 
lips,    just    before  he    expired,   were,    "  more 

LIGHT." 


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